I sip earl grey tea
on a blinding blue day, considering
the calendar flipped during my short
hours of sleep, from an evening carpet
of red air,
bright and heavy as gold dust suspended
and sparkling at midnight, just as
I left it, dense confetti over the skaters
in the square
to blinding shards of sunlight cutting
like knives to the mountains.
I slept through a cold rain, disorienting
as the weasel
I saw swimming along the pavement,
chilling, sleek, dropping like fluid
through the wheat dust city air.
I thought I’d greet the dust in the morning,
but sunlight
draws out long shadows, those long shadows
my eyes will have one afternoon
when I am old and pull Yeats’ book
from my shelf, remembering the man
who loved the pilgrim soul in me.
And whether he’s already gone, pacing
those mountains overhead,
having hidden his face, like Love,
amid the stars,
or still sits across the room, loving
the sorrows of my changing face,
I’ll remember him the same.
Or perhaps instead I’ll recall waiting
to greet him like the morning air, but
blinded suddenly by cold knives –
A calendar secretly flipped – I’ll remember him only
for his absence,
as a cleansing rain through which I slept.