"We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;
How restlessly they speed and gleam and quiver,
Streaking the darkness radiantly! yet soon
Night closes round, and they are lost for ever:—"
-Shelley


Dad would have been eighty today;
instead, years have gone by since I ran
the two and a half miles to the hospital
under a burnt, charry October wing

to visit him in his mechanical bed.
He was caving into himself, the doctors
blamed the liver, everyone was scared.
The halls were stocked with floating eyes.

Today the heat gripped the chopped hems
of street and ate away at our feet.
The dish of sky grew gray as mold,
striped with varices of rain that did not break.

Everything waits: Wednesday waits
for Thursday's lip, the moon waits
for the thunderbolt tongue, I am waiting -
for almost anything, anything to happen to me.