Start here. You don’t know
what time it is. You look out the windows
one by one, each one limited in view
and it’s all night, all dark.

You hear birds — once you could have
distinguished one from another but no more —
you sink into their chirps and whistles
like you understand them, but you don’t

understand them. It is a pretty
sound, chimes in the morning,
means something, must mean something
but what it means is not clear,

not at all. The woman who lives upstairs
pulls out for work. You know only a little
of what she does, pulling damaged children
from damaged homes — and now the light of day

is coming into the sky, the day is beginning
to show itself in spite of the clock insisting
it started six hours ago. The clock is always
claiming something that may or may not be true.

You can’t trust a clock for much — for accurate
calls to daylight, for timing the calls of birds,
for your own sense of when it matters and what
it means; even knowing what “it” is in the first place.

All you know is that this is decent coffee, the day
is coming, the birds are indistinguishable
from one another, the woman who lives upstairs
is long gone now, you might live or you might die

once the sun is fully up and more people
come out of their homes and the day evolves
into just one more signpost on the road
to arrival, to departure, to staying absolutely still

until something
reveals itself
and you can move unencumbered
into life.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T