Wakings

I am riding in a bus...a cab?...

watching the road ahead unwind

through a shadowless desert glare. 

I sit behind the driver, separated

from him by a glass partition.

We stop.  The driver leaves his seat,

turns and comes to where I am. 

He is leaning over me.

He is saying something. Is he asking me

to join him in the front?

His face reminds me of someone,

someone who is dead.

I am confused and cannot move or speak.

This is absurd.

I wait for him to ask again;  instead

I hear the song of an insistent mockingbird

and raise my head. 

The lighted numbers on the clock

tell that dawn is hours away.

I rise and in darkness take

the familiar route: three steps and touch

the corner of the bureau, leftward then,

reaching for the bathroom door.

Back to bed, relieved, I contemplate

turning on the light,

lapsing into printed page

and turning off my mind.

I do not want to see that road again

unwinding into a sunless glare beyond

this local time and place.

I do not want to face

that half-remembered face.

But now a customary light

lights the room.  The mockingbird

is silent.  In the wistaria that droops

above the window, a dove is flittering. 

Twisting and bobbing her head, she calls

Hitherthitherwhither?  Hitherthitherwhither?

Has she forgotten where she put her nest?

I am tired still;  in disarray.

Too much coffee, too much poetry last night.

I must  change my life.   Again.

"Calm down,"  I tell the anxious dove

as I unhinge,

rise,  stretch,  begin

to face an uncontrollable day

unrolling towards another night.

Wakings

I am riding in a bus...a cab?...

watching the road ahead unwind

through a shadowless desert glare. 

I sit behind the driver, separated

from him by a glass partition.

We stop.  The driver leaves his seat,

turns and comes to where I am.  

He is leaning over me.

He is saying something.  Is he asking me

to join him in the front?

His face reminds me of someone--someone

who is dead.

I am confused and cannot move or speak.

This is absurd.

I wait for him to ask again;  instead

I hear the song of an insistent mockingbird

and raise my head. 

The lighted numbers on the clock

show that dawn is hours away.

I rise and in the darkness take

the usual route: three steps and touch

the corner of the bureau, leftward then,

reaching for the bathroom door.

Back to bed, relieved, I contemplate

turning on the light,

lapsing into printed page

and turning off my mind.

I do not want to see that road again

unwinding into a sunless glare beyond

this local time and place.

I do not want to face

that half-remembered face.

But now a customary light

lights the room.  The mockingbird

is silent.  In the wistaria that droops

above the window, a dove is flittering. 

Twisting and bobbing her head, she calls

Hitherthitherwhither?  Hitherthitherwhither?

Has she forgotten where she put her nest?

I am tired still;  in disarray.

Too much coffee, too much poetry last night.

I must  change my life.   Again.

 "Calm down,"   I tell the anxious dove

as I rise, unhinge,

stretch,  begin

to face another uncontrollable day

unrolling toward the night.

Body and Self

Some mornings when we two get out of bed,

my aging body feels unhappy.  It moves stiffly.

It whines.  It complains bitterly

even after I have given it two cups of coffee.

It just wants to go back to bed and read a book.

It’s casting me as the harsh mistress who rides

on the shoulders of this frail dying slave, 

cursing it as she flogs it up a steep path

strewn with loose pebbles and thorny plants.

The poor old thing totters on, moaning,

gasping for breath, stumbling over its cane.

Nonsense! 

I must feel its pain after all

and I have coddled it with pills, podiatrists,

and expensive shoes.

All I’m asking it to do is support me

as we move about, mostly on the level,

meeting with friends, buying groceries,

trying to keep fit by walking briskly.

An occasional hill perhaps.  No tennis.

But once a  year I do require it to go with me

to the mountains I love

and carry me around below to gaze

at the remembered heights we once moved through

with all the careless grace we used to share.

                                                                        jjr  1/01//2008