Fourteen
Friday evening
Streaming TV
Almost drift off
I shut the screen
And try to sleep before your shift starts
You said it's peaceful
As you're breathing in your wristwatch
We're finding meaning for all these rituals
Their tick-tock (tick... tock)
Our own religious rites and texts
Sacred moments we've perfected
Give direction
Make a connection between
This life and those mysteries
That dare deny our death
I float into snowdrifts
Find it as if by precognition
Every ghost turned frozen
When the blizzard hit
Every ghost-print
Frozen in the blizzard hidden
Like a mystic by some visit shown a vision
Thrown on A pilgrimage
And went there
At home
You inside the kitchen sitting
Into midnight Mid-December
With its sensors smoking
And the streetlights Incense embers
And each center glowing golden
Woven in the filaments of silver
Winter spilling from the firmament
Beholden to my mission as I go
Out to the store for wine
Same route every time
My path in winter pasture
One fracture climbing up the bone
And a cold wind blows into Michigan
And a new skin slowly grows on the skeleton
The slowly sentient
Where I go
Shuffling slowly
And always penitently
My mission heaven sent and
And my charge old testament to roam
With shoulders permanently yoked
Inside an endless desert home
I know you're sitting alone
Where you're sitting alone
While your professors lectures
Play on that dictaphone cassette
The tape his ever present Home
Color-coding your notes
Your written sacred scripture
It's your cuneiform
Your hieroglyphs
Your Aramaic
Home where I'm finally close
Where I'm approaching
In my old prints ghosting alone
And I can see you through the window frame
Pulling your hair and getting anxious
Climb the steps of your porchlight
Reach for the door and open
Frozen
Thaw out in the warmth
Home
Cradling wine
Let all your worry and your burdens all be mine
And be vanquished
'Cause I find
Endless meaning in these
Sacred rites and routines
That have you awake with me each morning
In the nighttime
Fall asleep
(And tick tock)
(And tick tock)
(And we drift off)
(And we drift off)
(And we wake up)
(And we wake up)