Via Negativa

Yesterday, you asked how long
till seven o’clock and now the hour
has not only arrived but is past,

the way all things crest their apex
and turn away, gradually or of
a sudden— the way summer’s

languid gold has darkened
to sepia and all the little birds
with wingtips shaped like knives

have thrown themselves against
the sky’s steel vault. Nothing
to do when bitter cold

plucks you raw from sleep
at dawn, but fumble for a cup
of coffee, the first sip

searing as the kiss you
did not want to give
but that I demanded:

and soon, all that
cold sugar falling
through the air—

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

If coffee has no effect, neither has milk or tea.
Dense fog curls outside the window, mimicking sleep.

In childhood, recurring dreams of flight across
billowing sheets of white, harbors of sleep.

In the early hours, your footfalls down
the hall rouse me from watchful sleep.

My bed is lumpy with hidden vegetables,
the mattress striped with wires: elusive sleep.

Wild silences of deep solitude, trapdoors
amid the roots: for tumbling headlong into sleep.

I once had a rusted key to a garden where
arms carved me makeshift rooms for sleep.

The tremor starts along the foot, a fright
like falling into the sudden depth preceding sleep.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Across the street, the neighbor pokes
through piles of furniture left on
the sidewalk, hoping to rescue

a vintage lamp, a serviceable side
table, a stool whose rungs might be
replaced. It’s early yet in the day,

the truck from Samaritan House
not yet there for pickup; expected
rain still a couple of hours away.

At church, in the Commons; at the down-
town thrift shop; or behind the high
school, a row of oversized bins

where we bring castoffs from time
to time, for donation or recycling;
winter coats the children have

outgrown, small kitchen appliances
and tchotchkes taking up too
much room— so many times I’ve felt

the urge to evict such senseless
excess from my life. Things multiply
in the dark; enjoy it now, you can’t

take it with you; or, out with the old
before in with the new— home-grown
platitudes for making room and yet more

room for stuff. I think of Basho on
the road with his notebook and traveling
cloak, of ascetics spending their days

in meditation under a tree. Oh habit
and earthly desire, what purchase we
still hold on this worldly life—

Stubborn to the end, enamored by
the promise of the beautiful, we cling
to every surface assuring love that lasts.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.