The stillness of the street along the river,


the exhale of the last light and the gold before it.

A small boat knifing the water.


These ways we learn to endure, without promises

or permanence. This forgetting of particulars.


As for the night, it too is steady


and gentle as the hand that releases the asp.

Three years I lived on the street where evening

lulled in to a solo violin. Bach talking in my ear


from a high window while I brewed

the night’s coffee. Where I would lie

in the middle of the empty road, not thinking


of renunciation. I came to learn pleasure as a choice.


As the slow unlearning of wrongness.


As the giving in, finally, to fear.


To irrecoverable time. Talk of freedom is only talk

of forgetting, which is a gift I never had.

Tonight I have no desire for answers.

Only to lay each moment of letting go


carefully on the table. To give in to small happiness,

as somebody calling to the cat before the storm.


To the pleasure of the bird as she lands


on the awning fed and singing.


Comfort is knowing time happens at once.

A correctness to our regrets, our anxiety


to look back. So specifically human


this desire, to live day to day without fear of loss.

I am sitting by the fireplace now, the rain

coming down before the night does. Having undone

any thought of going back as I did unchanged

to the simple life. Though I’d have it all again.

The happy routines, luxury of ignorance. Knowing

we continue no matter who is howling.

Like the god of music, who continues


in the wake of such destruction. Who sings


in between all that violence.