Before, the light of day shone like the gloss on a frosted cake.
Now, above the evening’s glow, silence sits like a cat
watching the world sleep, or most of it
and I sit imperfectly still, hearing your thoughts in the room below
as though I were lying beside you
and could read the rhythms of your breath
better than what’s spoken –
which perhaps I can.  So I am waking,

piecing out the puzzle of the day,
grateful for the still, cold air,
the intermittent ribbon of Mulholland,
coyote shadows under olive trees
that tick as old straw beds tick when bodies shift on them
seeking warmth or the cool of space
and, finding it, recall with pleasure

its lack.  Possession is finite while
what’s gone goes on forever.  With dawn, if I’m still waking,
the sea will stand revealed as small, supple fingers
playing at the edge of all I know.  In the morning,
as I leave the uncompleted house, I’ll find the Valley
blinking and confused.  I’ll turn
to listen for the distant ocean
or maybe just a parenthetical from a first draft

for all I know.  I know how to dream:
your flanks rose as I subsided,  you grasped
my shoulder, arched your neck, …  Stars watch like insect eyes
over this perfected future, that milky past,  the undone city
ignorant as I am,  brighter,
freer, satisfied with light as I can’t be
somehow, waking in the dark above the olives
while you sleep within doors.