Seventh Sunday

Since you were not Hume’s sunrise I watch the late-May moonrise alone and a nicotine trance assures me that summer is coming, and the arrival of painted toenails; that at last I truly understand aubades and James Stewart’s vacant hospital gaze after his wits have vanished with his love; that the transmigration of bruises from skin to spirit brings about such splendid depths of character you’ll drop a dime and never hear a sound. Clouds race across the moon’s pale face. I have character to spare, it is no comfort; I will write us down, making nothing happen, it won’t repair this ache of failed induction, these eye that live for sunlight, though the sky stays dark.