In A Morning

Before sunrise
you wake up to suspicions
that you are not the same person
you were at bedtime last night;

you don’t feel as you did then;
your dreams were absent or broken;
you slept like a dead fish,
or a soldier slain in war.

You don’t think the same things
you did last night;
you weren’t as marvelous then;
you changed your morning routine
and did last night’s dishes before breakfast.

You ranted at the cat, wishing he was a dog;
ranted at the dog, wishing he was a person;
gently chided yourself for the shouting
so early, afraid of the tone it might set
for the day and you saw yourself
as a lump on a log, on fire
among a field of old tires.

Impatient, you wait
for sunrise to change the day
to what you expected;
you are helpless as you wait
and marvelous as you wait
and doomed to a life you never asked
to happen, not at all;
every little occurrence comes up
as a tell on your remaining game
to remain the same;
did you imagine this
would be the result —

that you might wake up in a room
from a poem written long ago,
a poem you wrote when you
were alive and thrumming intensely
to the corresponding live world?

You wake up
and you are someone else —
except you aren’t truly someone else
but the same — sad old man
losing weight and hair,
millions of memories
going swiftly away;
but despite all that
you are the same.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T