off a long night shift - another update

finally off a long night shift rotation - still in the haze, but wanted to get an update today (or night as the case may be), so here is another one from Humbly, I Offer These Awkward Poems - yep, this is from that same unpublished manuscript (but it was accepted, just not published - but you knew that if you've been reading all along ....oh yeah, i think i said that in the last post ... anyway, it's been shut-down, sort of regrouped -remorhped- into something else, that gathers the same sort of worthless dust on my desktop at the moment, as it has for the last 6 years. )



MARKING TERRITORY

Thursday night & rain
marks my window, the way an old dog
would a fence post.
it is not as a poet i listen,
but as a disciple.

the rain, muttering under foggy breath
something about the passing
of possums, hookers & the great pharaoh.

i ask it if test tube babies have original sin.
there is no direct response.

the rain was once symbolic of passion,
now of passion lost. i turn the pages
of poets i do not fully understand.
ink marks its territory
& i listen for the secrets of dawn
unfolding as the sound of trucks
through deep puddles.