at 3 a.m. i realize the night sky,
my hundred thousand things
unaccomplished, and i notice
the sighing busyness of the night
tunes going about their business
as they've done for millennia past
as they plan for millennia further.
 
you don't want to wake the air at 3 a.m.
you let dust settle and
space retreat; a folding complete
that when shattered chases joy away
instead of magnifies it the way the sun in the
daytime with everything it touches.
 
at 3 a.m. the cold summer nights
in the northern hemispheres of the globe
make you wish for rest and sleep with
all your might, make you breathe to the rhythms
of the rest of the world, for when you
 
dance your best steps, you cry,
for when you immortalize moments
in poetry, they only waste 
into the infinite, the icy,
the anonymous midnight,
 
and that is no way to effect love,
lust, hope, guilt, chagrin, anger,
illicit a scream and conjure imagination
into audiences easily rapt into believing
that the infinite, the immortal, the everything
is within their grasp.

¶ 7/19/2004 03:52:00 AM