Flush Left | Andrew K. Peterson | 01 13 23

Song For Goners
after Jeff Tweedy

Inside our tiny place
there’s still a long way
to go walking off the pier
at a loner pace, together.
I forget the least time
I meant home.
I mean, that’s inevitable.
I’m a fiber of a fiber,
goner than miles.
While I’m here, I’ll stay
in the salt of a crying
day. Say what you say;
I’ll try to listen,
reply in my cosmic
unpaid-upturned-
out-tuned-intuition-
think-I’ll-call-it-a-way-
kind-of-way. Sifting
the evidence, pouring
milky dust from a bowl.
Remainders of reminders
until they call me back.
I don’t mean to forget,
there’s just not a lot of time,
my love. The in-between’s
been like a lot of things
with lids – unfastened.
Just stay.
If it’s OK with you,
then it’s OK with me.
If you say that it’s just,
then it’s so.

—Submitted on 09/26/2022

Andrew K. Peterson is the author of A blue nocturne notebook (Spuyten Duyvil, 2021) and four other collections. In 2017 he was a co-organizer of the Boston Poetry Marathon. He lives near Boston.

Editor’s Note: The series title Flush Left refers to the fact that, due to our limited WordPress skills, we are only considering poems that are flush left. Poems already in our Submittable queue that have simple non-flush-left formatting may be considered for publication.

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