issue 11 FEATURE

FALL IN
Dobby Gibson

This is my love letter to the world,
someone call us a sitter.
We might be here a while.
We’ll have traffic
coming up here on the eights,
the latest news at the top of the hour,
and in this little bit of light,
when the bats circle the steeple,
they look as pale
as my unvarnished inklings,
the one about what
to do with bacon grease,
or how best to approach
a horse in the dark.
If you’re looking for them,
the cowboys left for the noodle bar,
the ballerinas are down
on the ground level,
circling the baggage carousel.
I’m not going to say a word about autumn.
I’m not going to turn this upside-down
so you can read
the answers from the margin.
Time is working against us,
but it only makes us love it more.
Every single thing I’ve ever touched,
even seaweed.
Everything I’ve thrown away
and then desperately wanted back:
new shoes, old boots,
cinnamon-baked pears,
bumper cars at midnight, Berlitz,
Connie Razzidlo’s basement
before her parents got home.
The first time I walked
out onto a lake in the middle of January
I knew I could go anywhere.

Dobby Gibson is the author of Polar, which won the Alice James Award, Skirmish (Graywolf), and It Becomes You (Graywolf), which was shortlisted for the Believer Poetry Award. All three titles were finalists for the Minnesota Book Award.