Don't look back

Behind your head all the things that you missed

congealed, washed away,

also stuck mainly in the bulbousness of your neck

like things blocked, reluctantly absorbed,

a tree trunk so heavy and mute

and so porous and so dumb.

When you thought you were facing forward

you were not facing anywhere really,

hardly,

hardly like an eye floating in space

pan-visual, where the eye is the eye.

Imagine the world is the eye then, and you are the spectacle;

It sees all, coterminously.

Behind your head, a pillow, the

headboard, the head-rest on the plane,

as if behind is where it all ended for good

and that was the end of it.

Where you started then is

only a side view if you want it,

if you make the effort.

But then the obliviousness just revolves a little

and that’s as far as you take it,

and you walk away from where you’ve just been

instead of the place that you’re going.