When You Were Away

Dusk drops like a dress, slow, just right
And night falls like a dream
When things get blurry, and you can fly

Fruit flies, so many fruit flies, chime
The edge of my wine glass
I sit alone on the edge of dark
Crickets and cicadas and katydids
Scrape the silence with song
A tiny bow and violin on the wing
A breathing, flexing tympany
Crawling through the forest canopy

My son zooms up the driveway
He'll be out of here in a flash
And he is, in a Jetta flash

Life trembles within, without
It's in the ear, the air
But matriculation draws him
Pulls him into its syllabus
And I feel life ebb from me:
No little hand reaches up
And touches anymore
The hem of my garment

______________________

I was recently scolded
By a friend who frowned upon my
Assumed certainties
(What could he know?). He
Asked whether I ever blink
In the night; whether I worry
About history's judgment
On all my rectitude. Do I
Ever doubt? he asked

My reply was to tell him
That even a blink
Would be like a night's rest

If I could only blink.
___________________

The border collie assumes her position
She keeps watch all night
As long as I am outside

She smells history coming to get me
Before I ever will
There's a clipped bark; she lowers
Her head and moves forward
I will miss this fight, if I blink

____________________

My glass is nearly empty.
A barred owl begins its eerie howls
More primate than bird: it might
Be time to take more Wine. I kneel
At the chancel, and forget

My son said the other day
That his glass is neither half full
Nor half empty
He said his glass is bigger
Than it needs to be

It was then that I blinked
One tear more than my
Glass could hold.


©Bill Gnade/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.