What Stares Back

By Robert Okaji

Today fog hugs the road
reminding me how the Ford Maverick's

headlights flickered out on the highway
some forty years and twenty miles

from anywhere, and I navigated home
by starlight and the certainty of youth.

Yesterday two geese flew past
my second floor apartment window

towards the pond across the street,
alighting, I imagine, by the submerged

bench or the power line bisecting
the water and field. I don't know

what I don't know, but now sunlight
trickles new paths throughout the

morning, and minutes swell fat
with unexpected, uncertain gifts.

After I picked myself up from the ice
last night, my body knew its true

age and I laughed for a moment,
alone in that gap between flicker and

darkness, air and cold fact. Where are the
others, I asked. Why have we grown so few?

****

A displaced Texan living in Indiana, Robert Okaji is a U.S. Navy veteran, and no longer owns a bookstore. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in North Dakota Quarterly, Vox Populi, Atlanta Review, Taos Journal of International Poetry & Art, and elsewhere.