Small Talk

I dreamed you called without reason, picking up where we left the

water months ago. Origins without metaphor, so much beginning with

the guy who loafed at the nurse’s station. Of all the things from my

second decade, a particular game of chess listening to Hendrix on

Haight Street. Of all the things we’d sleep a little later if we drove. I

ask again for the sky, the midstride morning & like a friend between

the porch & the seat beside me. I’m forty-seven years old & up beyond

these power lines the moon still follows me home. Of all the things

between us on the bed in the dark, you reading this on your birthday.