Ending the time of one for another,
The moment scratched on the door, the cell, the self,
Witness of continuity in solid world,
A blemish, an open button of the blouse held by a string.
The roads in need of repair while the silent commuters want out.
Out to her different kind of moment, duration of note,
A wind, a glimmer of flute, reflection
Of sun in a glass of water,
A phrase elongated but rightly placed.

Pleasure gardens preserved on film as the ad campaign,
The waterfall, the flies around undiscernible red, drying road kill.
The crows dash and hop, take wing on half notice of each other and
The whole sky circling,
Wrinkled age I thought could pass with conscious play
Is become some other fretful, forgetful dilemma
Demanding time and attention and words.

The call out and the reach back
As if the god of empty spaces were speaking to our pride, our void,
Our excess humility. Or is it mine, to be laid so low,
A prisoner, a refugee, an addict homeless in the hunger of crime.
Comfortable is worse,
Kierkegaard neglecting the call of uneasiness for the publisher’s speed,
The next need, me.

Bruises up and down the arms of frail, aged emptiness,
Robust still in killing each other,
Shoving aside other things that might matter,
Like time for her little bird, in the house beneath her blouse,
Tom and rendered, shredded as rags and lint,
Incorporated in a nest with bird saliva,
With care and attention and 4 little blue robin eggs inside.

Inside my mind she says,
I met someone like you here before,
Praying like the little waves that lap the shore
Below the cabin of your Nordic retreat,
Your earnestness to do good while wasting all that time
With leaks and furniture and some other woman.

Some other, some one beyond the note
At the turning door of eternity.
Out of the car but not quite ready to go home.

Destitute the heavens,
Desultory for the weakness of human will,
To even meet half way,
Wanting the selfish all to arrive
Like a bow on the eulogy of a philosopher
Who died in acute longing,
Suffering encounters of oblivion,

Dice and dish,
Prepare and regret
Right to the visceral end
Like the clairvoyant folding up her fringe as the séance ends
And money is exchanged.

By Rolf Stavig
2/25/2024