A Winter Turtle's Dream

It's hard to get the lights right at 3 a.m.. The kettle hisses and spits, embarrassing me because it reminds me of sex two nights past, unusually intense and messy, like when you're twenty. Metaphors are clunky mostly. Both shoulders ache and my right arm can barely move. What I am not telling anybody has become a kind of novel, one that at last appears to be nearing its end. These long walks are my life, these unread poems are my life, and my life is far away now, like a black bear's birth. It's hard to get the body to settle in a way that doesn't feel like a couple horses ran over it. You lose this or that dialogue partner and only later realize it as the best thing for them and your job is let that be okay. I slip a little on the stairs and blame it on the ice. Don't kid yourself: deadlines are not an illusion. Maybe something is wrong in a deeper way than we thought? Who can say they are not a passing image in the far corner of a winter turtle's dream? In the eyes of the Lord I am free. And still the roads all beckon.