T.W. Selvey

Privacy

I climbed a cell tower.
It was disguised as an undying tree,
evergreen spire, always
it’d be evergreen.

I found this, a secret diary page.
It had been taped to a limb crook,
the page corners were sticky.
Metallic specks adhered
to the transparent squares.

The page read:
Dear diary,
Last night, a dream
dropped on me

like a spark,
a spark dropping
on a wet leaf.

The dream told me:
become a stowaway
aboard a satellite.

Be one of them,
blinking.

Be driven on the satellite’s
raceway track.

Be a friend to stars,
as if you were up there to race them.

No that’s not a UFO, but nowadays
it doesn’t pay to be a skeptic

and in this lucky era,
you can be someone,
someone believed in

even if it’s inaccurate,

like so many beliefs,
baseless.

Who can see through the artificial aurora,
as reflected lights lampshade the city?

Who could look up and wonder who I am,
sharing in their secrets, a lens zoomed in?

________________________________________________________________________________________

T.W. Selvey prolifically generated poems from the late 1990s until the late 2000s, publishing a chapbook (Next Month, This Month) and winning two poetry contests from a (now defunct) bookstore along the way. T.W. took a long hiatus from 2008 until late 2019, during which time the focus was on work, home and travel. Starting in Fall 2019, T.W. began revising an old manuscript, which is now entitled Urbanized Body. T.W. is also the proud curator of a haphazardly curated blog, www.documentdement.com