The Last Bleat
Poem
Speak of yourself when stars blanket the night,
Or at noon, alone, with dinner as your only companion,
While laughter floats from bar to lingering bar.
Proclaim love for the birds in the tally of your bills,
Where a cat’s gaze is shattered by a fork and by a knife.
Talk of cleavers, poets’ fingers, a girl’s bare form,
Your robe at a gas station in July’s scorching heat,
Providing shade if the need should ever arise.
Discuss the crossings, the nurses’ measured steps,
The ribs of a teacher, the cold’s wise prophecies,
The deciphering of incense, the reading of time’s eyes.
With a voice that embraces its errors,
Speak until you paint a horse on a meadow of dreams.
Thus, you returned alone, bereft of star or verse,
Dragging the grey corpse of dreams once vivid.
Back to the train station’s lonely echoes,
Broken before the mirrors of a silent café,
Like a love letter destined never to be found.
