Poem by ​Don Share

With You in the Olive Garden of Eden
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I’m with you on Earth, where innocence has been changed to protect the names of the guilty.  Where women and children go last!  Where we blame religion and politicians and ask what’s in a word.  It’s not a question, like “What Are Years,” “Are You Experienced,” and “What is Poetry.” I’m with you in the scrimmage of appetites everywhere.  Where the world of dinner belongs to the meek.  I’m with you in parenting.  Dad, I know you didn’t pick me to be your son.  I’m with you at home, where for a long time, to condense Proust, I went to bed early.  Where on waking, I realized that the Tooth Fairy has blood on her hands.  I’m with you in the confessional.  From thence I can explain everything; and moreover only from thence.  Where The Red Thread that Runs through Everything is the gryme-dryzzle of it all!  Where the priesthood of my individual soul is celibate.  I’m with you gathering blood diamonds: That’s a big rock, where’d you get it?  I’m with you, MFA students.  I want to take your pronouns from you.  I’m with you at work, and have nothing to obtain, because I have all...  But I still have to go to work.  I’m with you at the end of the story, where ending is superfluous; full and blank as the calendar.  I’m with you on the high holidays, where were five persons in my “immediate family,” though this is no longer the case.  I’m with you in autoemancipation, where I close my eyes and see the dead-and-gone again.  I’m sexting you, and when I’m with you, I’m in the Olive Garden of Eden.  Where I say, here’s my bucket list: Find an ordinary bridge.  Jump off.  Thank you for your support.  Where you’ve always stood behind me, jeering me on.  Where there’s wifi, but no connection, try again.  Near where Neil Gaiman is reading the Cheesecake Factory menu for charity.  Where I am nothing, and nothing you say can ever make it not so.  I’m with you in modernism, where the elbow is the thermometer of the soul, said Delsarte; where the knee is therefore the thermometer of the will.  I’m with you in post-modernism, where even the Soul Conjecture was proved, albeit after a lifetime.  I’m with you back in modernism, where I told Louis Sullivan: I scrape my own sky, Sir.  I’m with you in the Historic District, where it’s time to pull up stakes; now all we need is the stakes.  I’m with you above Tintern Abbey, where you can never have too many giants.  I’m with you in the oeconomy of love, where it’s your own nothingness that your being is punishing.  I’m with you listening to Some Girls Deluxe Edition, where she’s who she is, not who she was. I’m with you in Kashmire, where Buddha has lost, at last, an earlobe: Out of mind, out of sight.  I’m within you and without you, 50 years after Sgt. Pepper.  I’m with you at the nativity scene, where every time you sigh, another item is added to your Wish List.  I’m with you at a Paris Review party, where nothing I own is bespoke.  I’m with you at the Grand Canyon, where I’ve seen this all before; it’s like a Polaroid of crazy.  I’m with you in a drum circle.  E pluribus unitard.  I’m with you in slippage, where I was nearly deleted on dark and drear December morn.  I’m with you at X-mas.  God bless us every once.  I’m with you in effigy.  The author of these lines is an effigy, so if you beat him up you are only beating an effigy.  I’m with you on a sleepless night where insomnia means, of course, dreamless.  I’m with you reading Dylanesque spam: I’ll be your Nobel Laureate tonight.  I’m with you in the Dead Poets Society, not standing on the desk, though.  I’m with you in the Supreme Court of the United States waiting for the judge.  I’m with you in the People’s Court: I can’t, and recant.  I’m with you at Sur le Table, where I happen to think that a dull knife is a well-loved knife.  I’m with you in parenthood, where there is no grief like the daddy’s because it is thought not to exist.  I’m with you at the vortex: Where there’s a volte, there’s almost certainly a face.  I’m with you in the 4Q; I had not thought that debt had undone so many.  I’m with you at Ground Zero.  If you’ve made it nowhere, you can make it anywhere.  I’m with you in the Pierian spring, where hope springs eternal in the human liver.  I’m with you watching the restored Yellow Submarine; All you need is glove.  I’m with you in the psychopathology of everyday life, where only people who are crazy say they are not crazy.  I’m with you in the Museum of Contemporary Art, where it can take a moment or so to make out a woman’s face.  I’m with you watching the Foo Fighters on the Oscars: I fought the Foo, but the Foo won.  I’m with you and the Presidential candidates in Chagrin Falls.  Let the chagrin fall where it may.  I’m with you on Valentine’s Day.  Go ahead, admit a few impediments.  I’m with you on Twitter, where I am turning my garbage can into a time machine. I’m with you, asylum seekers trapped in legal limbo.  I’m not with you in Brexit, because I simply had to leave.  But I’m with you on the Dies Ire, where desire is full of ire.  I’m with you on the crime scene school playground.  Rock, paper, schisms.  I’m with you in a long TSA line after which I will almost certainly be randomly chosen; and I’m with you in Hell because I’m too old to be an atheist, and where pride cometh before a fallacy.  Let my right hand wither if I forget how the rest of this psalm goes.  After all, before the Fall, Adam and Eve stood still.  I’m with you in a moment of silence, and your silence is as telling as everything you say; maybe more so, because it is less human.  I’m with you right here; I thought I would always be here, dozing in the living room on the brown couch.  I’m with you in translation, which has it that the earth apple, if it was a pear, Eve could not have eaten.  I’m with you in the diaspora, where even pessimists always order desert.  I’m with you at the dentist, where a pyrrhic victory is when you’re done getting your teeth cleaned.  I’m with you in Paradise where Et in Arcadia Oreo.  I’m with you in planning for early retirement: When they put me out to pasture, I’ll eat grass.  I’m with you in comment boxes: Yes, but if I eat shit, will I die?  I’m with you in philosophy; cogito ergo some.  I’m with you in the woe that is our second marriage where I shall hold you harmless.  I’m with you in Lord Weary’s Castle, where fake emotions can be really humanizing.  Where it’s an ill wind that blows no ill.  Where it’s an ill wind that blows no illness.  Where patience comes to those who wait.  Where all knots are Gordian.  Where all green cars are old.  Where you have to turn left sooner or later.  Where you should never eat the onion soup.  Where you cannot travel faster than the vehicle in front of you.  Where haste makes haste.  Where every solution causes another problem.  Where there is no they.  Where remarks is literature.  Where the village explainer is great if you’re a village, if not not.  Where, when the innocent were dying, I realized that dream gives away its final look.  Where you can add nausea ad nauseum.  Where migration, tourism, parasites, viruses, hosting, information flows, data, social networking, physical infrastructure, travel bans and paradigm shifts say I’ll give you something to cry about. 

Don Share is the author, editor, or translator of eleven books, and the editor of Poetry.

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