Monday, March 26
1 a.m. is usually where i find myself
drifting in the silence of a sleeping house,
all easy thoughts evaporated along
the slow descent from late afternoon,
the previous a.m.'s potential energy
resolved into bleary eyes, an aching
shoulder, that handful of dishes
in the sink
i can remember and imagine other
kinds of hour this might be, in other kinds
of life than the one i'm living
bar rooms full of smoke and arguments
train windows and the moving darkness
an empty street and the smell of the ocean
the shape of a woman's shoulder, sharp edged
beneath the sheet, the half-castoff blanket
a bright pattern half-crumpled
into shadow on the floor
some city alive outside the curtains
a night bird screaming out in the trees
in the nowhere countryside a hundred
miles from anything
memory and conjecture always building
a lattice of these bad poetics
through the here and now