—after Mekeel McBride, "I Want to be a Ferris Wheel"
 
Six a.m., seven, the light sweeps over me
and my two holdout cars lodged at the farthest corner—
one, with a rotten flat, has been here since September;
the other, with battery run down last night
during someone's bachelor party—
 
still, I am mostly tabula rasa this morning,
ready for the squeal of brakes, flutter of starlings
lifting away from yesterday's clump of spilled fries.
 
A work day, yes, and I want to be too cramped
for everyone to find a slot—you'll see them circulating 
up and down the rows, right up to eight o'clock and even after, 
when all hope is gone, office coffee urns are already 
half empty, copy machines well warmed and humming.
 
I want to be full of sun glinting so hard off chrome, mirror,
and just-washed windshield that you'll shut your eyes,
as if God had suddenly parked here, probably
in a forty foot SUV with solid black windows
and engine thrumming exactly in time to the monster beat
of the sweetest system in town, woofers the size
of heifers, tweeters sharp enough to crack an angel's tooth—
and you know in your bones it'll be nothing coming
from those speakers but Aretha, Otis, Marvin, and Ray
until kingdom come .  .  .  .
 
Yeah, it's a real hosanna party around here for a frantic hour 
or so, and then silent as mid-ocean by mid-morning. 
So quiet you can hear the sparrows gossiping, the scritch 
of a McDonalds cup blowing across the pavement, 
the measly prayer of wind teasing spiderwebs 
already grown between windshield and aerial.
                        

It is the hour between dog and wolf
and the hour of liver spots enlarging
on the soft forearms of my grandmother.
At such times the cinderblocks shrink
into the vacant lot rubble.
It is the hour when the retired
consider part time jobs.
 
At meals everywhere conversation lags,
the hour between mortar and brick,
between ice cube and tumbler.
In the backyards ropes hang still
from the stripped crotches of trees.
A bad time to encounter mirrors
or ease down into a scalding tub.
 
When my past comes to inhabit me
it is now the hour of sand,
climbing the stairs step by step
even as I sleep.
Hour of severed phones ringing
and my father who calls me
before him in his night chair.

                 We call the moon the moon
                                      —Donne 
 
We call this night the night, 
for sleep is always itself, and dream, 
and by the light of habit 
our habits are illuminated. 
 
Like light thrown back on itself 
until it grows single-minded, 
the mind cuts glass, etches steel, 
and burns with pure attention. 
 
We call a solo diner a party 
of one. The mind's party  
is always on, especially when it's late, 
it's lonely, and it's crowded with dark. 
 
For fields are different every hour: 
light changes more than rain, snow, 
the withering harvest. We walk them 
expecting to be changed, as we are. 
 
Work, we call whatever it is 
we do often or well. We talk, 
give thanks, think of reasons 
for postponement. We work like hell. 
 
We call despair despair, and a shiver 
nothing but. The moon is cold, 
we say, frigid ourselves, and searching 
a cold beauty. We call the end 
 
the beginning. It is the end.