​April 2009

Autumn’s apocalypse left us little.
Our salvation should be the heart –
thirty-four years and counting without vacation,
lungs unlikely to clock off for a cigarette break,
reckless, stone-knit and hollow disciples
who unknit their futures from me
while I ask a beautiful-face man
standing by a bus-stop
where Saturday could possibly end – or even better, begin.
Only he, I see, knows of hearts
more sacred.
I wrote a song for him today.
Now let me find that music,
let me praise that machine and its evergreens – forty-seven years without a vacation.