It is 3 AM,
and no one is sleeping in their dreams,
but a meter flicks with the ring of your pulse,
supple streams watched
by tender mothers
and their soft eyes in darkness.

I glimpse my city
of ratty ears,
dust of mill and coal the reluctant taste,
of acrid tongue settling against the corners.

And they beckon me
with once plunged fingernails,
and luring each tall man
against the harbor, against the wall.

So lingering their grasps remain on summer weeds,
skinny strands of yeasted yellow
like some lurching disease that has brought
trembling, tilting, padding
hard feet slapped against cold floor.

She was warmer than fall,
and thicker than winter's feed.

Her frame sits on the blinds of 3 AM,
where somewhere else on the road,
light is blown from infant hands.