Short sleep, caffeine soup, the thud
of papers served "Official Business"
And what to do with them.
Mile markers of pages typed,
Hot blue sky of baked thought.
Back home a nettled comfort,
Domestic kiss,
The dust of mutual imperfections settles
Thinly but there -
The need for constant cleaning
Of what moral entropy flakes
From two scalps.
This is good, this somewhat garden,
This oxidizing happiness;
At 35 I am not flattened,
But I am not shiny now.
Our love is a 2004 Honda Accord.
A nice love, a reliable love, a well-equipped love.
It gets us around, it doesn't let us down,
It is better than our friends' cars.
They ask us about car maintenance,
And we are good shade tree mechanics,
Generous with advice and hand tools.
We keep our mats vacuumed
And the oil changed.
Our cloth seats are fine:
Don't leather seats burn in the summer?
Fancy things make us nervous anyhow,
We'd feel obliged to slip-cover our hearts.
The honest wear, the pucker in the driver's seat back,
says this is yours.
And, we have good friends.
I have a lot of ands,
But not enough sleep.
When I get 8 hours in,
I slumber past the thrum of ands.
But when I don't,
I am terribly awake
And the particles,
The small words,
The twitchings of minor muscles,
Swarm over me and - there!
Conspire to be apparition.
With frosty whisper of
a long, middle passage.
