Matt Morton
Exit Strategy
Most things are easy to forget.
Everyone lives on a floating island.
The biographical includes what happens
in the mind. Don’t use that shampoo.
In terms of lighting, the difference
between natural and fluorescent is substantial.
How many friends can you truly say you have?
The dramaturgy demands that we sit rigidly
in Adirondack chairs, holding our breaths
in hopes of a miracle.
Could you draw a composite sketch
of all your past and present selves, each one
vying for supremacy and terrified of turning
into a ghost? So much happening at once:
geese deviating from migration patterns,
siblings drafting false-alarm suicide notes
in invisible ink. Each January
all the gingerbread walls come tumbling down.
After the squall, a shimmer.
What’s the bluest thing you’ve ever seen?
To exist at all can seem a terrible thing
but there are times when I get the sense
that someone just out of sight is tracing
sparkling infinity signs on the air with a Roman candle,
or plinking Claire de Lune on a distant shore.
As when I wept, watching the disaster flick—
a cliffside crashes into a fjord
and the father takes his daughter in his arms.
If that sounds corny, imagine you’re the father.
Imagine a giant wave
storming through the valley toward you
and the ones you love, the water
curling up like a scorpion’s tail.
Lightning strikes a radio tower,
red blinking on, blinking off.
Yes, our case is terminal but
maybe it’s possible to learn how to leave.
Maybe there’s a logging road winding up to higher ground.
Time enough for the mountain in the mind
to become a mountain.