4:59 AM, EDT, 8/29/09

I awoke and rose
61 minutes later
thinking I’d just looked at the clock
a minute before.  I must have
spent a minute
thinking about why I was awake,
then fallen back to sleep.

It’s as if I stopped
for a whole hour.
Only the memory
of having seen the time
tells me I’d existed then
in a time before
this groggy chain-smoking moment on the couch
in front of a screen waiting to be filled
with proof that I do maintain a presence
during the moments
when I am unconscious.

It is 7:15 AM, EDT, 8/29/09.
All hail 4:59 AM, EDT, 8/29/09.

It was raining then, as it is now;
I was hungry then, as I am now;
the urge to rise and work and smoke
were all the same back then.
Nothing’s changed except the time,
the light in the windows,
and this documentation.

If I go back to bed now,
(and I will)
will I even wake up
again?  If I do, won’t my first thought
likely be the memory of this moment?

How, exactly, does the future ever arrive?