ABSENTIA

It's cold. But not cold 
enough to stoke the stove. 
I will dress warmly.
I will throw an extra blanket on the bed.
I'll sleep with the dogs.
I will dream warmth and it will curve
inward like the line of your back,
outward along the line of your rump,
down deep between the lines of your thighs.

I listen to the interstate trucks. 
Always trucks.
Later, the owls will moan between 
the tire whine of the late night rollers,
a pair on the power poles most every night 
since I honored their road kill brother, 
turning his damp blank stare 
toward the east.

Maybe Coyote will taunt me
with penis songs and a howling 
desire for things with holes.
Coyote likes to do that, just to watch
my ears fold back and my lips
stretch out to kiss the blackness 
between the sprawling legs of the stars.

These straw bale walls seem unmovable,
but wind rattles the tin on the roof.
Like the tin, I'm unfastened from solidity. 
I hinge on a few stripped screws.
This clanging must be from my mouth,
that once kissed the flame of your most holy name,
sang poems in the space between our mingled breath,
and moistened your neck with the paint of words.

I know the peace of sleep,
but won't find it tonight.
My mind the ringleader
will conspire with the cold
and the trucks, the owls and Coyote,
the wind and the corrugated tin.
They whisper in the dark,
cronies in the crime of loneliness,
hissing and plotting
between the very breath I count,
but not answered with breathing,
the rise and fall not met
with the barely perceptible wet 
of your belly swelling into mine.

I should sleep, but I won't.
I'll wake and wonder what you're doing.
I'll rise and wander through the chill of the room.
I'll listen for your whisper "Give me your back"
and turn over to nothing.
It's cold. But I will not fire the stove,
but coax a feeble candle flicker
of light from your absence,
and tomorrow rise from this sleepless
night and shiver out into another day.



© 2003 by Richard W. Todd

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