Morning at his table
coffee (or was it tea?) gone cold
Should he make breakfast?
A dog barks.
In the bathroom,
he looks in the mirror:
dissociates in the usual way,
does his pushups.
His hands are moderately clean.
At work,
familiar formulas lie inert,
He adds the equations
of revenue and costs,
ends the day in perfect balance.
Home again, he checks the mail;
ads and bills.
“You have no messages.”
refutes another theorem.
At 9, he takes a walk:
looks from the street through a neighbor’s window.
He sees a man and woman in yellow lamplight,
their bodies in intimate repose.
He tries to read the silence from their lips.
In the dark, he turns
and stumbles, cursing, over a wagon
some kid left on the sidewalk,
then stands,
his shin aching,
and squints at the sky;
easing as a lover might
into the stars
searching for Venus.
