Vespers

What were you chanting  
from down the dry well
of our German coffee maker?  

A brusque Gute Nacht masking
the finesse required to defeat
the hinged plastic lid?

Begging bus fare
for the Silk Road
transparent,

even without mornings
bracing first cup.
A caution, then?  

Don’t leave bags unattended?
Know the warning signs of stroke?
Sleep like a baby, use two-step

authentication?
Your cloistered solitude,
fringed bulb of abdomen

whispered tonsure,
solitary choirmaster dwarfed
by cathedral walls

soaring graduated
into heavenly gloom
where I hovered on high,

my nightly routine
to summon The Flood,
deigning to lower

a spoon of salvation
while you wove a gossamer
chorale,  

working
the eight tiny shuttles
of your batons.