Ten Poems

Harbor Dawn

The first light finds the ropes still wet,
and gulls rehearse the same old claim.

A boat that slept against the pier
remembers, slowly, its own name.

Between two shelves the afternoon
grows thinner than a turned-down page.

I leave my coat on the last chair
and read until the windows age.

The street gives back the sky in shards.
A blackbird tests a shining wire.

Even the parked cars look washed clean
of yesterday, and last night’s fire.

I wrote you once, then wrote again,
then folded both into a drawer.

The stamps still wait. The dates go by.
The words know less than they knew before.

Stations pass like half-formed thoughts.
A paper cup ticks against the glass.

Someone three seats forward sleeps
as if the dark were theirs to pass.

Soap on the plate, steam on the pane—
the garden blurs, then comes back true.

A moth keeps choosing the same lamp.
I keep choosing the same view.

It hangs as if the tree still needs
one small refusal of the year.

The wind has argued well enough.
The leaf has not agreed to hear.

The sidewalk knows my pace by now.
A porch light practices its gold.

I count the blocks the way some count
the stories they have never told.

A sky no larger than a dish
holds crabs, and clouds, and one bright stone.

I kneel as if to read a map
that will not last, and is my own.

The hour is honest in this room.
No birds. The radiator ticks.

I set no resolutions out.
I only listen to the six.