Midsummer tanka

Night falls slowly in
A descending gauze curtain
Snagging on sunrise
Hesitant, ambiguous
Like interrupted breathing.

Midsummer, Riga

11 pm in Riga
Windows wide as yawning
Outide it’s as bright as a cloudy day
In St. Louis

Some workmen decide
It’s a fine time to install a kiosk
Across the street
Just because

Drilling, banging, smoking
A marvelous night’s work
No one sleeps
Time enough for that
In winter

I sit up
Banging out poems
With a relentless clatter

Morning broke,
And she was still beside me,
Inside me.

In the unbearably sweet
Suffocating
Liberating
God-swelling moment

All bare, all received,
All unworthy of the trusting touch
All unable to live
Without it.

Love slips unbidden
Past the barricades
Like a curious tremor,
An unswaddled child

All bare and raw,
All out, out,
The last suckling breath
Lurking in some wild corner,
Seen at last
Relinquished at last.

Inexplicable,
Like rain,
Inextinguishable,
Like morning sun.
Impervious
To all the years.

Gorges, mountains
Openly beg for access,
The carefree, unhinged wheel
Sits unbeckoned, waiting,
Offering.

Can it be these glimpsed echos,
These half-chewed bits of life
Are what there is?

Now that I think of it,
It’s been a kind of dream paralysis,
A fear of waking, flying,
Falling.

There were times
It seemed possible to swallow it whole.

No, that wasn’t it.

Have I missed much?
How much would I have missed
Had I grasped at opportunity?

With luck,
We’re billiard balls.
Some rational vector.
Some reasonable
Interference.

Otherwise,
What part of me
Is indescribable?

We always thought we knew.
Is our vision better now,
Or just our opinion of it?

My dear statistic,
I’m so glad we could meet
Like this.

What’s your cohort?
I’m Boomer myself
My demogaphic’s online,
If you’re interested.

Millennial? Too cool.
No Giorgio for you,
Or Abercrombie, then?
Red wine, not white.
Vegan I see.

Such a delightful
Subclade.

I’ve got your number.