Diving out of the dusty painting
once hanging over my parents’ couch
of a callow pacific village where
no one in the family ever went,
I floated in and out of snuff and grime,
sweeping over my motel ego as I was expelled
into a ritual deplaning traffic jam
of vehicles banking like pond-stocked koi.
Unbuckled, I hypotenused to daylight.
Impossible to speak in an uniambic cadence,
I swim a little, fly a little, breathe a lot;
Swatting elegance into turpitude,
I never get the final peanut butter out of the jar,
but I almost made it to Tahiti.
