THE WAY YOUNG WRITERS DO

Oh Frank, we are at the beach, exchanging
hypotheticals with our notebooks and

the sun is a net that we swim in and I'm thinking about
how a writer feels the need to remove herself

(like it's happening but I'm not going to feel it
because I'm going to make it something else)

like an article of clothing, from the moment to not forget
the story, the poem, the flash of fiction (the gall of that!).

Like the one you told me about a man who falls out of the sky
or off a bridge thinking about the velocity of numbers

and lands splat next to her, you, or me while we are writing,
while we are sketching a circle of minnows underneath that bridge

carving shadows into cement and stone with our fins
the shape of ouroboros, the borough eating its tail.

The young man next to us thinks that it might make a great tattoo
and writes that down. We don't even notice the act. We don't even hear

the bones break, one by one, every day. Instead,
we are encased in the light. Instead,

we catch the glide in mid-flight and dream of flying
fish on the way down from a morning drive,

freedom instead of fright.

                           Alan Semerdjian