water at dawn
runs by fingertips
onto cold stone
as a robin intones
ripe throated
staccatos
that bounce
along walls
that have seen it all

should I
be happy
wasting days
plotting the gap
between taste
and ability
under giddy sun
that announces all
with just a few
spare syllables

I made a song
to enchant the night
like Scheherazade
striving to hold off
the encroachment
of decree
but I come apart
at the seams
snagged
on the narcissism
of nostalgia

those bright
waterfalls of dust
continue to gather
in fine heaps
by the curtain
and a brown river
smokes on
eddying
inscrutably
in the deep

we are
migratory animals
who never
really move
I won’t live
this day again
though I
live it again
a thousand times