For better—but, of course
for worse—when I pick up one
of your smart slender books,
it puts a sort of simple frame
made of un-lacquered wood
around the minutiae of morning.
It is—you'd be relieved
to hear, I think—a subtle feeling:
like gravity,
like insects' wings beating
from way out there on the fringe
of your garden;
I find myself
pausing between pages—
to trace with a finger
a certain pattern in the
grain of the table,
to listen more closely
to the sonata
of the fridge compressor,
to gently swirl
this glass of cool milk—
allowing it
to dawn on me
(the way dawn itself must
dawn every day at the
end of a rainy Maui night)
that I wouldn't enjoy it
if I drank it too quickly,
that any second—
this one—or maybe
the one that comes next—
could be
an equator,
some invisible
but significant
prime meridian,
the exact dead
center of my life.
