Can’t Stop

Every animal in the house 
asleep except for me.

Maybe there’s a mouse at work 
somewhere in the walls,

but not to my ears.
It’s quiet enough that all I hear

is the warm air rising from the grates
and a plane headed for Boston,

or from Boston, forty miles
east of here. Soon there will be

the sound of the early train
passing the bottom of the hill;

traffic on the highway ramp
will pick up and after that

the apartments above me
will come alive and telegraph

busy mornings through
their floors to my ceilings.

We call this place a city
but unlike some others,

it definitely sleeps.
The animals here

take their need for
unconsciousness seriously,

as do I and I sit here acutely aware
of my own desire to fall away

and forget where I am 
for a few hours, yet here I am

watching the cats sleep
and thinking of my lover

asleep in the next room
while I pursue yesterday

all through the night
and into today,

hoping to catch it and shake it
until, somehow, it changes.