One Night

It’s 3 a.m.
and I have a choice:
Lights out;
or crack open another:
This one’s a pugilist
One strong island
Hemingway,
stout as Chinaski

The candle flickers
with the flybuzz of desert neon
and as that flame grows
the page aglow
And the darkness shrinks
like the noises from down below:
A knock on wood
The ghost of a grace
blows in through my door
Her breath borrowed
from Olympus

Sulfurous,
we sit
A drink or two or three or four
to talk about Johnny Cash
train songs in sinewy baritone
Jackson Pollock and Nina Simone
Murder Ballads
And at the broach of dawn’s curtain rise
She lay bare
now asleep
Her storm
a fainted gentle summer jetstream smile

But I continue on
To the end of this.