POEM OF THE DAY

Everyday


Minutes like flies on a mare's back in summertime.
A whole day's gone by and you haven't done
one true thing.

There was a time when sleep washed it all away.
when you woke in the morning
and suddenly the trees were new again.
Now, yesterday clings like lint
on a black double-knit in the closet.
You switch on the console
and you've seen it all before,
heard the same stories, played the same tunes.

What I'm talking about is no laughing matter.
It is ominous as cancer or sickle-cell anemia.
Men rape or kill, women sleep with fools,
people drink, smoke, masturbate for hours.
There is a roof on their sky.
walls surround them wherever they walk.
and they can't get out.
They sicken inside
like right whales on a New England beach.

Sometimes just before they die
they are able to see that the windows
were open all the time.
The walls, the roofs were never there.
Every day the light was waiting.
Every day the tide was waiting
like a strong green hand to lift them out.

But their eyes had seen only dry beach.
They lay unmoving in the shallows.
And far off the ground-swell lifted
the deep sea glistened with rage.

"Every Day" © copyright 1998 by Michael Hogan. Reprinted from Imperfect Geographies (Q-Trips, 1998)