A Hotel Lobby at the Edge of the World

What’s more important than all of this,
what’s always been more important

than any of this, is the question

of how to set work aside for another day —
for instance,

When you find your voice.
When you light a cigarette
for the dead smoker on the other end. Wind.

When you reinvent grammar,

and that new grammar hems you in.

When the television blares and you don’t hear it.
When a hay bale rings on the nightstand
and you answer it.

(If it rings, answer it.)

When. When you think of the dark.
When you think what you think you are. When it engulfs you.

and the grass in your hair from yesterday:
still there.

want to watch you laughing down from the pier.

A smashed caterpillar somehow on a windshield.

Somehow, otherhow.

I am always wishing you were here.

A blur of a triptych
I saw years ago.

Where a vine is only a vine,
where two sparrows flying fast
around the house, not expecting
to find me standing here,
are just what they appear to be:
two sparrows lost for half
a second in my shadow.

But there was nothing holy about the intangible.
There was only the last horse.
After it was gone, the imprint on the bricks
remained. Then the memory of the horse.
Then rain for a thousand years.