I 

              spilled          some
                                         words
        on                  the

Floor and
                                               as they lay
                    they
                                    ­  surmount
     all
I've    ever     written.



                                 ...and I lay down my pen for a broom.

The distance from here
To sleep is epic tonight
Three a.m.
Dreams aborted
Tomorrow's lines
One thought thick
Toss and turn
Toss and turn
The whole world drowses
While I stand guard --

There is no melancholy
Deeper than that of
The sleepless, exiled
To ebon outposts
Forlornly counting
Disinclined sheep --

A single birch leaf
Floated to my sill
Today.

It made my summer
Knees wobble as it sang
September's denouement --

It laughed at me so
Mired in time and
Said,

Don't worry
Little one,
You will know
My secret
One day --

Such a mundane thing
To walk through a door
Yet you are there
On the other side, smiling,
And we are already making
Memories and pressing them
      into our pages --

We laugh at saying the same
Word at once: zinfandel
And I feel a beginning
Coming toward me --

In our first goodbye kiss
That night was a telling, sublime,
Beyond our lips and our stories
That cocooned us in that moment
      and spun love's possibility
Under approving December skies --

I once wrote a list of things
That represented me :

Smoke from a discarded cigarette,
Rain on the Ocean,
A saturday matinee.

I wrote that I was a penny
On a train track, waiting.

             ≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

Well guess what, folks-
The engine  has arrivd.
        ljm