by Harry Calhoun
Woke in the middle of a hard starless night,
all dark in the bedroom and chilly cold outside.
I could almost hear the tubercular darkness
coughing hemorrhage. It had gone so wrong
with her death to my presence.
The slimmest moon will not spit its shadow
onto the wall of her absence. Once the gibbous
lit our way into and out of the shadows,
but now the wolf has its way, creeping
into our old backyard and your new savage wanderlust.
My old faithful dog and I do not like this.
We are not timid but there is much to fear,
waking to bland black water pressing
with the quiet suffocation of loneliness from all sides.
The void with her gone crackles between my ears,
white noise in the radio receiver of the mind.
I place my body like a slovenly bookmark,
a poor offering between the sheets where we
used to sleep. Hope to pick up some wreckage of rest,
adrift on the beach of a hard starless night.