I wrangle for this bit
daily. The unfooled
bread of the body
yields to a regimented nap,
a bribe in a cup of drink.
It folds its offended petals.
Digits calm.
Then the long phrase of me
is spoken. Silence drools
over it, a lusty
and unmanaged child,
between two loaves rising,
dividing without end,
without a true middle:
what should have been done,
that which won't be. A Lord
presides over them, needing no sleep.
He worries about my anger
for the man hovering over
my seat on the train,
the implacable blade of being
unhappy in the present,
a blade as thin as the present's
sheath�

I speak to the Lord of things.
I ask him to pull in
his wake a night,
its incorrigible
repetitions
and make out of it a rule
to follow in the dawn
alongside birds that open and close�