6:30 AM Arrival

There are beaconed street lamps down a long pathway
because the sun has not set, or risen, or both—depends
on yesterday and today. The ghosts of sunsets past have not left
to impede the sunrise and keep the colors from spreading,
keep me from floating to you.
My gale filled palms slipped on my skin,
loosely, weary for a new day. Sun, or moon, or both—depends.

Take a woman wailing under the moon, without home or with,
wrapped in white cloth, ratted and dirty, wailing, a moonstruck lunatic.
If you feed her some sparrow’s tongue, toss her in the woods, maybe
she’ll start singing.

If only I had heard the sound—
that whoosh of dust and empty space, rumble
like something great is happening, like the earth is beginning to rupture,
like my skin will burst open to reveal a network of veins,
linked and patterned like shedding snakeskin.
But I walk in and silence stalls. Just old men glued to their papers
and me, wool coat and silken pockets.

Monsoon rains and salted wind—I feel the trees trembling,
but I don’t hear the rumble of your arrival. And then the lights come on
bright and furious, a roar. I see wool and silk and a silhouette of a man,
and I am not alone.