Every day, and for no apparent reason,
I remember prison. My footlocker,
barbed wire out the window, how coffee tasted—
instant, lukewarm from the bathroom tap
first thing in the morning. I would stand there
sipping, watching the Standard sign through the barred windows,
miles down the road. I can still see how red
that sign was in the pale sky at dawn, so far away
beyond the fence, and yet near somehow.
I stood next to the shaving mirror,
as close to the sky as I could get.
Even then, I knew how lucky I was
“and I really lived in undivided love.”
I understood how the loneliness and the love
would always be mixed up inside me,
like a sky and its Standard sign bound
together in the little nearness of time.