He asked me whose Porsche was in the parking lot.
It was just past dawn, and he was all spit
and bent hair, in a rush of cold air
as he plunged in for coffee.
I stirred in creamer, told him I didn’t know.
He said, I thought it might be someone who lives upstairs.
He meant the apartments above the place,
the steamy windows ringed in burnt out lights.

I said it used to be I thought if anyone owned a Porsche,
they didn’t live in an apartment, but then
I saw a Mercedes parked by a trailer,
Volvo by a shed, knowing that some people sacrifice
all for an image. He non-sequitured to James Bond,
a movie where Bond’s tires are shot out while he chases
a train, so he hops the tracks and his rims snug the rails

and he gives chase. I thought about yet another
connection of image and auto and all that is hidden,
but it was early morning, so I only said, sometimes
that’s what it takes.

He thought I ought to title something that. Later, I thought
about his suggestions. The last photo of his I had seen
was of him on a bed with a shotgun and a picture
of Henry VIII. Before that, naked on a rock in mid-stream,
snow plump in the sun on the stream’s banks. This was a man
who could see. Each time, he told me the story of the tripod
and the precarious set-up. That’s what he was getting at.
Sometimes that’s just what it takes.

I’ll take his suggestion, maybe. Because
I know this will become another in a series of the Paul Poems,
just like I know talking to Paul is snorkeling
over coral where what I find is living and amorphous,
incongruous and sudden. And sometimes that’s just
what it takes to get me going again. He keeps ranting
about sacrificing for images, and lately he has known
all about sacrifice. His entire life is walking away
from him in the arms of his wife, and he tells me
he knows now which images are important. I wish
I did. I think he knows already, but I want to tell him
that writing is a sacrifice and refutation of a world
while continuing to inhabit it. You keep it from
inhabiting you.

You work to hold it to an island in your chest
that you keep an eye on, touch with your finger
where it’s rough like a scab, remind yourself
of its edges. Scratch it to see what runs,
and sometimes that’s just what it takes.