Apparition Poems #s 2135, 2051

Out of the apartment, striding down
East Eden Street, I note how it might
feel to be homeless— desperate free-

falls into nothingness. I’m also gladsome
I’m not homeless yet; desperation,
thankfully, distant, inaccessible.

Yet also inaccessible is the warmth
of a life richly lived, which I
used to know well. As the sun rises,

something or someone other than “I”
sees the whole tableaux, meets me in
the middle with it from above—

wires, row-homes, branches, lights—
the latent morning tense, trying,
East Eden still asleep, I’m awake—

...................................................................................... 

Each day, I’m hollowed by
the Recession’s vacuum, & either
create my life or perish— no sense
of safety or coherence from a storied
past. As I walk Conshohocken’s
streets, I note the sky, just before
dawn, amusing itself in pastels—
ice on branches over tiny front/
back yards— all held self-sufficiently
in time’s objective indifference,
which I now feel passionately about,
for & against, December’s circuits—