The Day Is Uncertain

Sleep’s been lurking in the corners
Of your scattered aches all morning,
So that you drift between alert
And dozing some more in your chair.

The nests of texts you wallow in—
News, letters, fiction, and your own
Poems—all feel grubby as unwashed sheets,
Tiresome as being invalid.

Too much cancer, too little sleep
(Real sleep), too many painkillers,
Too many trivial setbacks—
All too much like the show you watched,

Or tried to watch, with your daughter
The other night, when the service
Started glitching just as you were
Both getting into the story,

The scenery, the charming lead.
For a while, you kept watching,
Hoping the stream would sort itself
And quit abruptly seizing up

Mid-word, mid-eyeblink. Finally,
It got too frustrating, and you
Decided to turn off the show.
There’ll be none of that in real life.

If you keep blinking out mid-thought,
If the thought your dreams invaded
Was how mediocre your thoughts
Tend to be, well too bad. You are

Still in the middle of the stream,
And you can either cultivate
Patience with your frequent glitches
Or keep glitching impatiently.

The soft hum of a distant plane
Somewhere over the canyon’s walls
Laps like lake waves against the shore
Of your eroded awareness,

And maybe you’re okay with this.
You can see leaves tossed in the breeze
Outside the windows on your dreams.
You can dislike these lines later.