Your Phone Call At 8 A.M.

          Your phone call at eight a.m. could

          have been a deadly rope.

          All the colors of your voice

          were sifted out. The barest part flew

          through the wires. Then tight-roped

          into the comfort of my own home,

          where I surrounded myself with smoke

          of piñon, with cedar and sage.

          Protected the most dangerous places,

          for more than survival, I always

          meant. But what you wanted, this morning

          you said, was a few words

          and not my heart. What you wanted . . .

          But the skeleton of your voice

          clicked barely perceptible,

          didn’t you hear it?

          And what you said you wanted

          was easy enough, a few books

          some pages, anything, to cancel

          what your heart ever saw in me that you didn’t.

          But you forgot to say that part.

          Didn’t even recognize it when it

          came winging out of you—

          the skeleton’s meat and blood,

          all that you didn’t want to remember

          when you called at eight a.m. . . .

          But that’s alright because

          this poem isn’t for you

          but for me

                           after all.