This poem is in envelope quatrains.
I don't write too much in fixed forms rhyme and meter.
Envelope just means A-B-B-A. Like an envelope,
it folds it in.
I think that this was the first one in this book
that I wrote that is in a fixed form.
I think I wrote it that way because it
has very few objects in it and I wanted to try to shore it up.
Consider a Move.
I wrote it when someone who I cared a lot about
was having a difficult time and calling me up long distance.
Consider a Move.
The steady time of being unknown in solitude without friends
is not a steadiness which sustains.
I hear your voice waver on the phone,
haven't talked to anyone for days.
I drive around.
I sit in parking lots.
The voice zeros through my ear and waits.
What should I say?
There are ways to meet people you will want to love.
I know of none.
You come out stronger having gone through this.
I no longer believe that, if I once did.
Consider a move, a change, a job, a new place to live,
someplace you'd like to be.
That's not it, you say.
Now time curves back.
We almost touch.
Then what is?
I ask, what is?