Daydream Reality

Gnarled hand gently clawing at the head of a docile cat, who is resigned to this doddering habit,

I press my pain-hardened spine into the arrhythmic rocker’s troubled kinesis

And, I fancy, I pull threads of long-ago memorized verse, free verse, musically articulate, and

Say them to the world: my small, anonymous living room.

And now, each night I count the stars,
And each night I get the same number.
And when they will not come to be counted,
I count the holes they leave.*

 I laugh under a Panama hat

As I stir myself with other people’s phrases.

May 2006