The Trip We Didn’t Take

It’s time to leave this place, though there are no
gray humps—this year as yet—of melting snow.
I wish that I could fly away with you
to old friendships still vital in the Brew

City, where grad school formed (and scarred) your brain.
We’d sit like crows inside a silver plane,
you staring, earbuds in; me drawing fast
in my gray book until Bic lines, at last,

gleamed dully, like aluminum. We’d land,
debark, go somewhere with wainscoting and
artisanal lightbulbs, hot coffee, birch-
white cups (handles removed), and from our perch

I’d stare out at a gray-black hump of snow
beneath the muffler of an old Tahoe
jam-packed with cans imprinted with the brand
of the brewery where my father’s grand-

father was a chemist, outsourced now, label
no more matching beer inside, undrinkable
these days to most. Under a gray wool hat
you’d tell me all about the people that

had helped you here, thwarted you, cracked you up—
God bless ‘em—and you’d peer over your cup
and ask, Hey, are you listening to me?
And in my peculiar way I would be—

but only to the consonants; the vowels
becoming chants of monks in birch-white cowls
inside the monastery of your heart
where I, a postulant, would sing my part.

*A previous version of this page contained a misprint which has now been corrected. This version reflects the correct text of the poem; Dappled Things sincerely regrets the error.