A DOZEN DAWN SONGS, PLUS ONE

First the windows gray, then

go black again, but gray is

on the way. Williams lights up

and says, “It’s on the way,” but

I can’t hear him over the over-

head cranes. I don’t look up

because up is not sunlight

breaking above the eastern

hills or even rain clouds

meant to cool our fevers or

telephone wires clogged with

bad news. Up is the flat steel

ceiling from midnight till now.

8 a.m. and we punch out

and leave the place to our betters,

the day-shift jokers who think

they’re in for fun. It’s still Monday

2,000 miles and fifty years

later and at my back I always

hear Chevy Gear & Axle

grinding the night-shift workers

into antiquity.

A warm breeze from

nowhere and even the rats scent

the first perfumes of what’s

to come, waken, and slide

invisibly into the upper air

to contest the world. Surrender

nothing and never, their motto,

if they have one. They must be

unionized.

The river works.

No one flips a switch, no one

shouts “Ready! Set! Go!” no one

writes a memo, it just runs

at its own sweet will its whole

blue-brown length toward five burned

lakes and seven seas.

We wait,

the night-shift owls, puffing out

our spent breath into the pure air

of 1951. A weak sun not

worth fighting for rises

behind the great brick stacks

of the brewery. War is

everywhere but we don’t go because

the streetcar won’t come.

If I had

a Milky Way I’d share it

with the sparrows picking

about the piss-speckled

snow, if I were reliable and hardy

and had wings I’d pick

about the piss-speckled snow

with the sparrows.

Ragged

flights swarm the upper branches

of the elms only to abandon

their roosts and wheel

across the sky they’ve wiped

clean, back and forth, back

and forth they wipe until

no clouds or divine signs are left.

Must be some tremor only they

can feel or hawk stink or hint

of human treachery.

Three mock

oranges do not an orchard make

but will do for now. Light blows

in from Ontario every

which way, hot and cold,

until the owner of the vacant lot

(who also owns the orchard)

kicks off the covers and calls for

sleep and dreams of her, the one

he’ll never know.

Half of us are

women. Think of that! Women,

women alone rising from

single beds meant for sleeping,

women in pairs, women with men

yearning to be free of us,

the men they met last night

or last century. “Give me

liberty or give me liberty,”

their anthem, and they mean it.

One two

three four seconds and Harvey

yells again for Mona to get

her fat ass up. Don’t she

know it’s Monday workday.

The weekend—the last one, the

one—is long gone and Harvey’s

got to have his coffee and his

oatmeal and his lunch box packed

just right, right now.

One two three

four the scuffed black boots down

the stairs. “Does the bitch ever get

anything right?” Slam goes

the outside door, while upstairs

the teakettle sirens its answer…

Then quiet, the actual quiet

of public lives in private places.

6:30 a.m., the city of dreams.

There was music. Not

the trite tunes of the blind stars

circling unseen or the gnashed jazz

the trolleys carved

into the avenues or the bad-assed

anthems of the airwaves—

of John Lee, Baby Boy

and Big Maceo—, not even

the music of the immortals,

Bird, Diz, Pres, music of bone

and breast, and breath, music

never heard before. Or again.

West

through Toledo, on past Flat Rock

going north. The sign is gone. Leo’s

prewar ’39 Chevy four-door

doing its dance routine: a little slide,

a little hold, a little slide on

black ice the devil delivered along

with two bald tires and two good

retreads. The sign’s gone, the one

that said “Heaven Ahead” (or was it

Wyandotte?). Sunup behind us,

last night dissolving in the brine

of light. Coming home one

last time, yes we are!

Oh

to be young and strong and dumb

again in Michigan!