The Road Into Morning
Think of Friday night at 11:53,
how you wish to sleep with the windows open;
while streetlights amble into the shadowless room
and a patchwork quilt, white at noon, rests luminous,
the palest shade of green you can almost name.
Think of an acoustic guitar ninety miles away
as a new melody cascades, timbre by timbre
from taught steel strings and late-night fingers.
Think how, for over forty years that tune as played
inside of you, how it craves a new delineation.
Think of a younger lover, years ago,
who called your name in sleep;
how that naming ricochets now against new cut grass,
the ozone of gentle rain, as both rise up and in
a second-story window to tease your sleeplessness.
Think of the western plains,
where hides beat fifteen hundred miles away,
the gourd dancer, ready to go, ready to die.
How maybe you’ll be there in eleven days;
every inhale, every exhale, red and alive.
Think of poetry as it pulses, the pull of its undertow,
how the color of each word reverberates
and sings a thrumming solo through your veins.
Think how this is the road into morning and night,
into yourself, into everything that wishes voice.
