The Mercy Runners

I am a good man
    in a borrowed world,
Said the mouth as it
Fluttered off the face

Connected to its destruction.
     In this case, a drug leper

     halfway through the
Upper intestine of
Lower history—Cleveland

Under northwest winter.
Everything is letting go,
     everything,
Including the snow,

    Which one-ups
The logic of impoverished water.
Letting go of itself,

Landing as unannounced
        and minor
As an obituary

That walked one year to another
And moved no leaf in particular.
Momentum is the drug,
A job, a trip, an arrow

Drawn directly on skin--
    arranges
Generations

Like the smell of closets
        inside clothes.
Appointments, cancelled, kept, with

Nimble hooks of one
     look to another—
Sometimes propelled

By the choices of others,
    sometimes freed for

Sudden leaps forward.

Better to be mobile and
    enterprising, alert

Than slow as the
Problems one can't
           wrestle.
       Kept in speed,
Too quick to be

Grabbed or touched.
Like the shark, racing against
the danger of its heartbeat.
        Circling there,
And in that
way, for what?

...below the surface, out of
Pace, in unison, legs: flowering
    a figure eight current

That swims in place, but upholds
Like mercy on the run,
            everyone.