Another Day

It should be difficult,

always difficult, rising

from bed each morning,

against gravity, against

dreams, which weigh

like the forgotten names

of remembered faces.

But some days it’s

easy, nothing, to rise,

to feed, to work, to

commit the small graces

that add up to love,

to family, to memory,

finally to life, or

what one would choose

to remember of it, not

those other leaden

mornings when sleep

is so far preferable

to pulling over one’s

head the wet shirt

of one’s identity again,

the self one had been

honing or fleeing

all these years,

one’s fine, blessed

self, one’s only,

which another day fills.