What you wait for rushes through the night.
Darkness rushes through the summer night
so fast, now it is nearly light. He holds
her hand, presses as much as he can see
over her sleeping body. The owl rushes back
to its nest to regurgitate mice.
So many cars rushing through the night
into the city with its buildings stuck in the ground.
He looks at his hands, they seem like someone else’s,
older, unjoking. He drinks espresso
watching the moon. A warrior, singing
of his failure, turns the blade into himself
and a red cloth is dragged across the stage.
Death holds him down with its back paw.
But it has to make it another 300 miles
says the young couple to the mechanic
found in the desert night. Pluto passes
within the orbit of Neptune, messing up
the mnemonic device. The blastocyst rushes
through the night of the fallopian tube
into the lush red morning of the endometrial lining.
On the hanger, the black dress doesn’t look like much.
The mind is made of silver dots.
The heartbeat stops. The woman is alone.
A dog runs down the alley.
Finitude, earth, stars, a river into trees.
Rushing through the night, they sit very still,
unable to rise and turn on a light
because of the heavy thing between them.
Finitude, smoke, a cool breeze,
only the black keys. Sleep, there is nothing
more that can be done. Sleep, tomorrow
we’ll go to the sea.