Sleepless night, worry, trauma, the difficulty
Of words. Forgetting sets in after it hits you.
Only images can save you. I am waiting for sunrise.
This is how we survive through the snow, frost and thunder.
We lift words and seek to find our power.
Child in the classroom afraid and insecure,
We are clapping to a tune so we can breathe again:
inhale hope, exhale worry. He says the answer lies within.
The aunt is teaching children to pray,
The uncle’s riding his Harley through Denver.
Let go-- this is the final cigarette. A mantra
Towards sunrise. The lone star above still as early prayer.
The violence that people can do children
Is something better left out of poems.
It’s as black as dreamless sleep, black as a universe.
I’m waiting for two rabbits with a bag of carrots.
The lone white rat hides in the bushes behind me.
Language stole away with memory.
The gaps and fragments jagged and I bled and said.
He said, I never smiled.
He said, I was as anxious as a deer or a leaf or a butterfly?
I heard the voices of dragonflies, human-eyed.
There was no white swan, no god, no lover.
And am I to stay stuck?
This is why I wait for sunrise.
He went five days without sleep, stayed up
All night in Denny’s, washed in the bathroom.
Slept a few minutes in the library.
The language of trauma flat, a jerk away
From a raised hand. The summer ending
And the night cold--