The day slows after a sleepless night,
and conversation arrives like whale song.
The watery lullaby reminds me—
we hear without words, we understand.
Outside leaves shift in a humid breeze
and the milky light of a summer morning.
Later the sun’s rays will burn unimpeded,
but now, a neighbor sits on his steps,
reads the paper, raising his head only
when air conditioners surge to life.
The sweat on his forehead isn’t exertion
but another operation of living.
He pulls a handkerchief from his pocket.
From my window, he seems to swim, just
adjusting to catch a current. My head
is heavy. Yesterday I lived two days—
one in the sun, another in worry.
The moon and street lamps recast every object,
tangled beginnings and ends until
I looked back on myself looking back.
I can’t remember any of it now,
the ghosts having settled into the floor,
buried in silt that threatened to bury me
and then didn’t when dawn swept in again.
Across the street my neighbor rises,
dusts himself off. He smiles up as if
he meant to find me, but turns to go.
He leaves the world momentarily
empty, uncluttered, uncomplicated—
a place where all of us might safely sleep.
Filed under: American Life, Angels, Chicago, Doubt, Gratitude, Hope, Human Nature, Knowledge, Life, Longing, Musings, Neighbors, Poetry, Summer, Thoughts, Urban Life, Writing
. . . “do it for love and for the joy.” Yes. And know too that we read for love and for the joy! Thank you for inviting us in to this one day. It was good to be with you.
Thank you—you inspired me. —D
the humidity in the midwest is a mind killer but it seems you have found a way through it–liked this, the quiet flow and tone of a moment.
Thank you—it’s not so hard now that school is out. I hope you’re getting some time off too. —D
I love the new design of your blog. I love the evolving forms of your poems. “I look back on myself looking back.” It is artful images that are also confessions that are also observations about life that make your blog so appealing. You are the opposite of Emily Gould. Your “confessions” are subtly couched in art. Your essays are personal in an intellectual sort of way. You are definitely not an oversharer, no more than any other poet or personal /literary essayist. The blogosphere is frankly too riddled with Emily Gould’s. We come here for a reprieve.
Thank you—your comments mean a lot to me. Someone reminded me recently that St. Augustine and Jean-Jacques Rousseau both wrote books called Confessions and didn’t use the term in the sense we do. That’s company I wouldn’t mind keeping. In the broadest way, I’m not different from Gould but can’t help revealing my own character by using confession in my own way. I don’t think I’ll ever get past wanting to be something I’m not, but I hope someday to be more comfortable in my own skin. I just wonder if being true to yourself sometimes means stretching you sense of oversharing. I’m not so brave yet. —D
Gould seems to have discovered too late the harm in oversharing.
Love these lines. Trying to get rid of my poetic muse now and get into some good old-fashioned prose, but that isn’t getting me very far.
Thank you. Your prose muse will show up. It’s all in the practice anyway, and it all counts. I’m always telling my students that what seems tough now will be easy later on…because of the challenges you face now. I hope that’s true. —D