Knots

I find knots forming at parties now, between the drinks table
and the stairs, between the bladder, heart and spleen.

Tight little knots of past, like bubbles in a meniscus,
or the salesman’s bundle of balloons, or like that dream

in which you meet that girl again, and live together,
and laugh and lie together still, as if the years between

that time and now had never passed, as if the argument,
the split, the break, those letters had simply been

stages on a journey coming home, that ended right.
It’s all one reason why I’m only infrequently seen

out at parties now: the little knots of memory and people
too sober to meet strangers, too drunk to let things be.

<<