The Tide

                    It's six a.m. and you're at your desk
                     and the hollow rush of the first flight out
                     skirts your waking daze and you know
                     what this means — that it's leaving time
                     for some but not for you, because
                     you're anchored here —  elbows
                     straddling your keyboard as you
                     search the night for a helping verb,
                     a compass point,  a light to circle
                     in the dark, and now through the blinds
                     the sky splits open, leaking light, leaking
                     day, and the forecast calls for rain, but what
                     you are thinking,  wanting to know, with your
                     chin in your hands, half-blind, staring up, is,
                     what God would want with so much sky.

                                           .....

                    And it's toast and jam and it's off to school
                     and the sky is grey and you scrape each plate
                     and consider the cost, the price to pay for
                     measuring time in tides and trickling sand
                     and you hear the phone and in your head you
                     hear his voice and you'd think the sound would
                     be a gentle nudge but as you pick it up, you
                     brace yourself for the ‘here we go again', and
                     the toothy-edged awareness comes like
                     rusty metal digging flesh and in your mind you
                     play the tape of that's not what I said, and that's
                     not what I meant, and on the phone you find
                     you're dropping commas and rescinding phrases
                     and you are scraping the veneer off words
                     and still you're not heard and it is then
                     you begin stitching meaning into minutes
                     because you know the rain is coming
                     and when it does there will be no caulk
                     to seal this leak, and of this you're sure
                     because the weather knows your bones

                                           .....

                     And so you go about your day like nothing's
                     wrong and you ignore the check engine light
                     and the low-cabin-pressure sign and you ignore
                     your brains' static backbeat backward
                     masking screaming Paul is dead and Pull up!
                     and Don't look down! because you know
                     it's no one's fault there was no one there
                     to tell you to cross at the lights or come
                     in from the rain and he is not the one who
                     dropped you in some godforsaken wasteland
                     with a toothbrush and a compass and made
                     you find your own way home and this is what
                     you're thinking as you catch the bus and go
                     to work where you sit and issue spoon-dosed
                     pleasantries and dodge the spatter-pattern of
                     the day's contempt and all the while you cast
                     slant glances upward because today the sky—
                     a mulish grey—lacks even the decency to rain.

                                           .....

                     And it's home again and it's home from school
                     and it's The Lion King on DVD and while
                     they watch, you fold their clothes and realise
                     you need to watch it too because
                     you are grinding teeth and grinding gears
                     and swaying hips and you are trying trying
                     trying  to be anywhere but here and so you hum
                     along and tumble in the music's flatted notes
                     and falling pitch because if you had your way
                     you'd take your heartache honey-glazed
                     and when it's done you try to write but 
                     it's your daughter in the doorway with
                     so many needs and your needs, too,
                     so strong you can't deny them but yours
                     you must keep distant, far upstream
                     and out of reach, and when the phone
                     rings again you're all excuse me, please
                     forgive me, and that's not what I said,
                     and that's not what I meant, and you are
                     hands that rise and fall to estimate dimension,
                     doing clumsy guesswork in the air, and
                     to him you are all door and no window and
                     you are an obstructed bleacher-seat and
                     a half-lit exit sign and all day you've
                     held tight to your umbrella but there's
                     been not one measly drop of rain.

                                           .....

                     And it's up-up-and-away and here we go
                     and that's all folks and up the stairs and
                     down the hall and once again you're on
                     your own and you twist your mind's dial
                     too far left and there's a static awareness
                     that's still arriving, just beyond your high-beams
                     and it is one part come and find me, three parts
                     go away, and with the dark and the quiet
                     comes a sharp reversal, a certain something
                     that connects like stilettos on a hardwood floor —
                     that tomorrow will be the same, that you'll
                     still be a losing streak in skin-tight jeans,
                     each swerve another stitch pulled free
                     and you'll still be good reason gone to ground
                     and you'll be repeat steps two and three
                     and right then something idling in you guns
                     the engine, leans on the horn and a red light
                     inside you flashes yellow then turns
                     green and what was once a gauzy, mindless
                     time-spliced twitter becomes an assassin's
                     loaded clip and you are ready as you lie
                     on the bed and think of downpours past
                     and those to come and there is nothing
                     left but to wait for the rain, for the storm
                     to bring its heightened waves,  and to welcome
                     in the tide that will wear all stone to sand.