Journal Fifty-Seven New Jobs I've Never Worked

When I'm cleaning, I pretend I'm other people. That's where my poem today comes from, cleaning and pretending. It's tough, this job, but someone has got to do it. Someone has got to not make sense of this world.

The Mantle

I'm sweeping floors
in all my dreams
and then I wake up,
shower, eat, talk,
and sweep the floors
for real this time,
this waking time.

It's dust and it's hair
and I've opened up
all the windows
and all the mail.
Here is a note
to say my identity
has been stolen;
every number of me
is now a number of them.

It reads like a triumph,
so I write my own note
on dusty bookshelves,
say, "Take it, it's yours,
you've won it, finally,
fair and square.
Best of luck to the new you
and the old, stolen me."

Then I gather it all
in the dust pan
and I pick out the change,
count out a dollar,
throw the rest away,
think how to reinvent myself
now this chore is complete,
now I've got time on my hands
and a dollar in my pocket.

So, I build a new story;
I don't take it
from any other poor soul.
I am careful
to include ins and outs
and skill sets
that will look good on a resume.

I have climbed
so many mountains alone
and I have dived
to secret places with names
like The Trench,
The Pit, The Farthest Reaches.

I speak all languages
but the one I teach,
Spanish, and I've never been
to Spain, I've only flown over,
I've only looked down
from above and even then
there was a wind in my hair
and a fire on my tongue
and all the things
I've had my students say,
briefly took meaning,

for a moment
they had an identity
all their very own.

And knock, knock,
here is the new me
at the front door
and the longer I wait,
the more he paces
up and down the porch,
peeling the paint
with his shoes,
shoes that have seen
the four corners
of a round world.

I open the door
and we stand like mirrors
facing each other,
nothing in us
but ourselves,
no reflection
but reflection,
light going on and on
and back and forth
at invariable speed,
the speed of a dollar
in the rattling of change.

Here is myself;
here is the only one
I see.