what kind of rest
do you expect to get
at all—
what sort of recompense
for passing which state
of remoteness—
when there is no bat,
no rodent,
no owl stirring,
no moonlight silver
water lapping
against a cistern wall
with no lush
canopy overhead—
no dense carapace?
how is a body supposed
to zip itself up
for a bit,
to stall infinity
between two blinks
of armistice,
to see only the pureness
of the ink and not
the words written in it,
to pull its head off
and push it
off into the black
stream of that
same ink
on the pillow of oblivion,
and then turn around
without guilt
and forget?
