The engine idles softly from the comfort of this dusky parking lot as I
Wait
Half-heartedly dreading your arrival.

It’s not your fault.
I was raised in parking lots,
Fed up on exhaust, leather interior, errant crumbs.
This pausing of time is
A rare delicacy, and I savor it:
The pleasant lightness of the air combined with the gentle purr of the motor,
The dashboard lights festive and flashing

Red
Yellow
Green

The traffic busies by me,
it’s really picking up now.
Each car a microcosm,
Each a cocoon
A universe
An ecosystem,
And me, a fly on the wall for this single moment of this single journey,
Undetected and undetectable in my own private Idaho.

I do some make up to pass the time.
My skin looks perfect in the glowing mirror light.
I take a breath.
It’s the first one in days.

Right now,
legs out on the couch
One floor beneath my sleeping spouse
I am a tiny mouse
Right now.

Right now
blanket-covered cold
I am heated under folds
Fabric-covered, naked soul
I am a raw ceramic bowl
Right now.

Tomorrow I’ll be ******* tired
Tonight I’m wound with frank desire
Coals around my very core
Close the door
Have some more  
Tomorrow ill work on the how
Tonight is for
Right now.

I would like to take myself very seriously.

I’d like to be a painterly writer,
Like Nabokov,
Or a wry storyteller like Jenny Lewis.

Comparison, especially to this degree,
Is the thief of joy I hear,
And I am but me.

A professor once scolded me during a practicum session,
“This is not a dog-and-pony show.”

But she’s wrong.
It is.
It’s all nonsense and I get to be the ring master.
What could be more joyful than that?

Maybe Nabokov is a creep
Maybe Jenny Lewis is a Hollywood mirage,
And maybe I’m just a silly little goose
Who puts thoughts on paper
As if I deserve it just as much.

A rare steak with red wine
to rend with my teeth
to replace the shed iron,
to soothe the ache of my emptying body,
to rebuild the temple
in sateen and velvet,
to nourish the traveling soul who at last commits their divine Knowing
to divine Being,
to provide safe passage from There to
Here.
To prepare for the guest who may never appear.

I’m trying to write a poem.

A great poem, universal in message, beautiful in word and thought.

So I zoom into my life:

The steam rising from the tea on the side table;
The patient hound at my feet.

I recount the day, the week,
It’s the ******* holidays and the future is bleak.

No, no.
That won’t do.
I won’t do that to you.

I zoom out, then,
Out and out to the glistening streets
Broadening my view to include the tent city in the park,
The nighttime quiet,
The settling dark.

A universal truth,
Now this is the tricky part.
How to distill my thoughts into a beating heart?

It’s windy and wet. Not too cold, yet.
I worry about the **** heads living in tents,
Some of them won’t make it to spring,
We all know that.

One wrong turn and it could have been me.
You.
Any of us.

Not a beautiful thought but a plain one,
And a prayer
That they find some food and enough firewood and clothing to survive out there.
Some of them may be writing the next great poem,
Who can tell?
I wish them well.

Alas.
Tonight is not my night for revelations.
My head swims with tomorrow’s obligations and the call of slumber, so sweet, breaks my concentration.

Another night then.
To find the truth
And learn to shape it,
Nail and tooth.