IF WE COULD LEAP TALL BUILDINGS

If we could leap tall buildings

in a single motion

that is unfettered and expressive

like a hitchhiking thumb

and other kinds of sign language

to passing traffic,

If the length of the road

were only the few steps

I take from my front door

to yours with no bridges to cross

nor rivers to slide through,

If perfect dreams lasted

as long as they should

and allowed us all to see the end

of the story as it concludes , resolves

and finishes with neither snow flurries

nor tears before breakfast,

If all the notes we wrote and played

mattered as much to those faces

in trolley windows staring into unoccupied space

going off to grace, calamity or more of the same,

If I could decide which irony fits me best today

so I might have it tailored and pressed until

the creases are sharp as a tongue seeking revenge

or the edge of a knife seducing another slice of cheddar,

Nothing would be the same

just as nothing would change at all

because it's not nothing that

I stand here thinking that

twenty four hours a day doesn't feel

like twenty four hours any more.