FURTHEST HYPNOPOMPIC REVELATIONS

The eyes open

Amid a dash

Of percepts

And the terrifying

Deduction that

Things have verily gone

On without you

The neck more

Crowded with hair

A mouse desiccated

In its gluey end

The cars have all moved

To the near

Side of the street

Hugging the trash

And rain has glazed

Into bubbled plates

On the freezing ground

You can hear

A car startle

Into empty alarm

As often we might

In this trauma of days

Not dying

Unlike the kitchen’s racket

Which soothes one

Into pattern, into sense

As the coffee sputters

In its particular

Way, day-old, reheated

Turning the heart

Over with its promise of

velocity, lift, loquacious

Recommitment

To the dreams that

Have only half

Left us and so desire

Their hypnopompic revisit

Before the body

Is appropriately clothed

Or the mind

Which is nonetheless

The body is itself

Swaddled into its habit

Of traffic and passage

The light like

A scaffold

Hinting the cathedral

That is Brooklyn noon

While the toaster smokes

And the cat sings

Like a skittering quail

It is time I think

To wake my love

Who sleeps late

Under the doused lighght

In a torn T-shirt

Warm like a stone

Or a hood or

The sound of Bettye

Swann’s voice

When she begins

“Then You Can

Tell Me Goodbye”