Saturday (A Version)

Wisconsin is experiencing a “heat wave,” twenty eight degrees
After weeks of double-digit below zero temperatures,
it’s finally warm enough that inside actually feels shut off from nature’s cruel expanse
It’s Saturday
Cars skid by my bedroom window, through slush and rusty metal ice;
heat vent drips acid techno;
roommate shifts a broken beat in a finicky recliner
(in counterpoint with pages of Atonement flipping in his fingers);
outside, sirens pierce through thawing air and dissipate in triplet
It’s Saturday…
                 and death is finally melting…
                                                          and each expanding particle in my hearing threshold
is performing a part of a sublunary symphony

Each bedspring and lightbulb and door hinge: a harp string, a violin, a clarinet
A motet of mundanity unfolds at my feet and I am is its sole audience
Absent my attention, absent my affection, wind still crawls through cracks and cavities,
but for now I am here and I dictate its curtain call

From where I am (reposed), it’s a Simple Affection, like happy chance in a song without resolve
I blink…
                 and just before I remember I have eyelids…
                                                          it’s over…
and I softly clap and nod into a room at peace (as long as I have felt it)

Saturday (A Version)

Wisconsin is experiencing a “heat wave,” twenty eight degrees
After weeks of double-digit below zero temperatures,
it’s finally warm enough that inside actually feels shut off from nature’s cruel expanse
It’s Saturday
Cars skid by my bedroom window, through slush and rusty metal ice;
heat vent drips acid techno;
roommate shifts a broken beat in a finicky recliner
(in counterpoint with pages of Atonement flipping in his fingers);
outside, sirens pierce through thawing air and dissipate in triplet
It’s Saturday…
                 and death is finally melting…
                                                          and each expanding particle in my hearing threshold
is performing a part of a sublunary symphony

Each bedspring and lightbulb and door hinge: a harp string, a violin, a clarinet
A motet of mundanity unfolds at my feet and I am is its sole audience
Absent my attention, absent my affection, wind still crawls through cracks and cavities,
but for now I am here and I dictate its curtain call

From where I am (reposed), it’s a Simple Affection, like happy chance in a song without resolve
I blink…
                 and just before I remember I have eyelids…
                                                          it’s over…
and I softly clap and nod into a room at peace (as long as I have felt it)