How to Keep

The timbre may seem lost. And the tremble.
In the immeasurable, the tingle still sings

its way to your heart. It is almost the color
you once coveted, and it shakes its hips

in the wide weather of other things
since then. How can you lay aside

such a past and not want to pull it
back at command. Your hands certainly

remember their way along its curves
while you ride the long highway today.

When an old song plays on the car radio,
you realize there is nothing you need do.

It finds you.
It keeps you.

***

Karen Neuberg’s most recent chapbook is Myself Taking Stage (Finishing Line Press). Her poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in 99 Pine Street, Hermeneutic Chaos, Serving House, and S/tick. She’s associate editor of the on-line journal First Literary Review-East and lives in Brooklyn, NY.