—A Misreading of Robert Creeley’s “For No Clear Reason”*
I dreamt last night
the fridge was over, that
its large, white body shifted, left to right,
left to right, on its four feet across
the nighttime kitchen, the only light glaring
from its open door. Outside, the contents
spilled from its various mouths, until there were only
eggs & mustard & cheese in the door. It rolled
its empty body down a hill, accelerating
into a tree. This occurrence, that large impact,
reminded me of my third anniversary: the canoe
attempted to make its way across
a fallen log, hidden in the murky water, and—
defeated—rolled its alligator-body
upside-down. When our heads emerged, we saw
the cooler had opened its mouth, wide,
and all the water bottles and oars were
floating like lost buoys down the river. We hauled
the canoe onto a makeshift shore
and beached it, searching for a way forward,
or back. When I finally crawled
from the water, my fingers and toes were
turning blue, looking for an exit.
*
Original lines from Robert Creeley’s poem “For No Clear Reason”—
I dreamt last night
the fright was over, that
(I misread fright as fridge, which became the beginning of a whole other poem…)