James Enelow (pome)

Night Writing Without You
--for Stephen Gardner

The occasional walnut
drops. And cracks.
And rolls along the tiled roof.

I think of you,
working late, writing,
and think of how the bourbon
mingled with ice,
how your dog’s hair
stood on end.

But you aren’t here now
to hold back my wailing,
and I feel the poem
inch its way along my spine.
Pictures of poets look down at me;
and the porcelain eyes
of Mexican fertility figures
look down at me,
watch and glaze over.

Somewhere there is a blooding;
somewhere someone’s spirit is leaving;
and somewhere a small life starts
the passage of its cycle.
And I am fighting the poem,
fighting to push the words through my fingers
to try and make the white space black.

It comes, winds its way, comes
through the mouths of fertility,
through the eyes of the makers,
rolling, rounding the edges, rushing
to fill the white and me,
with sleep.