Drift

I have been up all night
writing and re-writing
tomorrow—
watching the stars
tick across the sky.
Around midnight
the Big Dipper is just
beyond my window.
By 3 am—only stars.
No names.
Then in the hush
just before dawn
when time slows
nearly to a stop

I see my grandmother’s dog
the one she made live outside
that entire North Dakota winter
his pleading, cold-crazed eyes
a sad, two-star constellation.
They shot him in the spring.

The sun doesn't rise.
The world falls face first
into its light, finds its mark
resumes the fiction of the day.

With regret I sense before I can see
the Holy Dark dissolve into grainy
morning. Here and there a bird
stirs in its quills. Before long
they are on the roof rattling
the gutters, pecking at the
tiles. One of these days
they will pull the house beam out
and the whole thing will fall down.


asha