People

On the plane from New York to California
the handsome men sit alone like the past.
I have so much to say to them but don’t
and order a scotch—neat. A word
that describes almost nothing.
Your dress in a storm one September.
Ethan’s red shoulders coming out of a bath.
Maybe I haven’t loved men the way I love women
although often in the afternoons
and now somewhere in the middle of the country,
I want even the bad things to do over.
The wheels coming down right before landing.
The wheels you can feel but don’t see.
And the people, how being with people,
has turned out to be, more or less, something like that.