In the sixty-three years
I have lived
some instants are electric:

Into sunlight they marched,
into dog day, into no saints day,
and were cut down.

Your logic frightens me, Mandela,
Your logic frightens me. Those years
Of dreams, of time accelerated in

I went down to Missolonihgi
with my oldest friend—this was a long time ago—
and we visited Byron’s house,

The cracked creekbed sang with heat that afternoon.
My eyes scoured the brush for shed snakeskin
When far off the dazed whistle of a train

What was it?
Something became lodged in the machine.
That was it. Which inflection could not cure.

They have come from dinner at the nearest new restaurant—
you know the kind: bottle glass in the window,
brass rails, and a fanciful line of red neon

Mostly my nightmares are dull. My ex-wife yells
and I yell back. The cat bolts out the door
and bites the neighbor’s child. Or else

The gravestone-looking slab donated to the college
for instructing students about light and dark
and the rotation of the world stands solemnly

The onion is frost
shut in and poor.
Frost of your days