Vespers

Dark soft sky—          my will. Close by          someone plays guitar. 10 p.m. So not all here work in offices.  Of late my gaze has slipped: consumerism seduces— Shapiro’s line, a dollar for Whitman.                          Alex is in my thoughts,                          his mind like a storm— an indoor storm— long hoped for in the academy’s stale halls.  Whom to tell that story? Lately, reading Ken Bolton’s books,          I’ve considered them musically structured.  With an oblique sense made of unrelated things: how Lou Reed’s ‘Dirty Boulevard” and the portent of adjacent stars are just my own shadow following me home, to a room I adjusted.          Ken’s fared better with his          R & B, as the poems show—          they’re more elastic in tempo, more aware. But this mind erases its footprints— this desk is full of chores. America happens out the window,          or from the balcony,          where our cat spends her life, in love with the sun.  I like to buy fresh paper, am I then suspect? Rain saturates memory’s streets, not that rain ever stops, or knows its origin. (Improbable.)    History lesson:                          I am contingent                          but my shape’s my own.  Once I cared not for the plot.  “My friends were always my strongest conviction”, a line of mine I like.  And dreamt of ploughshares lit up by moments of surprise. ‘Night’—that word takes notes on how to sleep born blind.