ROOTS

It’s the cat waking you up in the dead of night,
rummaging in the yard among the cardboard boxes,
tearing up the garbage bags,
sliding “vibrato” along the bars of the basement.
After a jolt of fear you feel
it’s good having been scared
by the neatness of things in the dark,
the sound of their frank squareness,
in days of terribly bright and blank city stares;
all you need now is just this coming across
with the rootedness of shapes.
At dawn you kiss your wife, get up,
for a moment look at her sleeping
and glimpse a corner of the sheet she is holding on to,
a token of the shore you have reached
in the lock of her arms.


In memory of C. One year after.