from The Dialogue of Pauses

The Materials

Evening light’s encroachment on the café table

marking off a winter day in which nothing of any

consequence has been accomplished following

another night without sleep till rising like a corpse

at 3am to iron shirts I never wear, having eaten

a bowl of frozen blueberries and yogurt with raw

almonds, a cup of yesterday’s coffee and trying

to read some but my eyes are tired and inflamed

with searching for God knows what in the freakish

play of shadows on the wall and this recurring

hallucination of long hairs tangled in my beard

or stuck to my lips like a melody I can’t quite

forget, I feel so old with this, I miss my friend,

I would call him now if he were still living,

he could have talked me down, he would have

told me what they mean, these few streetlights

wrapped in fog, this glaze on black pavement,

the letter I’ve been waiting for for fifteen years,

I would have believed him, even now, at this

desolate hour and no one listening but me,

no traffic yet to speak of, just a pair of cop cars

parked down at the all-night Shell Station,

nuzzling like the last loose teeth in a drunk’s head,

while on the local AM they’re calling for snow

by morning, just a dusting, no accumulation.