0 comments Monday, September 10, 2012


I left the city in a daze;
I remember the snow pooling at street corners.
Night constructed blue and clinging haze
to threaten the mourners

with the possibility of a new morning
(how they scrambled, and talked,
and violently ignored each other on the train,)
while the bright edges of clouds were forming
over the hudson river and the drain.

such sights passed behind me, though
I went northward on a steel chain
and thought 'No more of this gyrating flow
and no more sleepless pain.'

so escaped I; there were lawns now,
and wood. The fireflies danced the evening
as I lay, hearing my nieces shriek and play,
holding my fingers against the leavening
stars stretched across the branches like fabric,
waiting for the coming of the day.

and I imagined they imagined I was
a mote on a strange feverish planet filled
with prime numbers and like selves
and pi and beethoven and cups of water on dirty shelves

and I thought if they could do it,
they might very well imagine a dusty me
dreaming of snow on street corners
riding south into a constellation of wonder and spit.