Keeping vigil at the window
while my wife sleeps, my dogs, my child.
Night, keep your bargain.
The thin tree thins even more. It knows the sun is never coming back. The sea is a far-off sigh. A car travels slowly north, bewildered, as if there is no west, no east. A sleeping baby strapped in the car seat. The drunk pisses in the shadows which piss back at him the story of his life. I hear them tapping out the tune. Across the street, an invisible woman smokes at the window with the light out. She’s there, then gone. Almost there, and gone. Cold prayers slip unnoticed from the red tip of her cigarette. Tenuous lives suspended in the book of time, digging up the bones of love, is this what you call hope, is this how you find peace?
Too late, it’s done.
The moon already broken, already signaling the breach.
Tomorrow I’ll wake up and somebody will be dead.
Somebody will be born.
copyright 2013 Octavio Solis
to find more poetry by Octavio Solis, click HERE.
Bonnie McClellan-Broussard 