The night that the Accountant

The night that the Accountant figured out poetry
was a simple story
about a man and a woman
and the stories they tell
each other-
About
who should and who should not
discuss poetry,
since there is no GAP
in poetics or likewise, alibis.

I told him a story about a poem
that was a story
I made up,
I was never really there.

He said, 'Of course it wasn't true.
Being pushed off a bridge was just a
metaphor-
for what-
I don't exactly know, but if I know you,
it was a feeling
you felt that day.'

I confessed
it was true, all of it.
I could have jumped.
He understood
more poetry
than he ever could have
accounted for.

Along this
line lying between non-and-fiction,
a subtraction connects us.
And we reconcile our difference
of opinions in between
heads and tales
black and read
to solve all word problems.




Photo credit by Mathew Brady, Long Bridge, Washington, D.C. in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.