Maybe all you’re owed in the November 
Of mild rain and a grime on the red bricks
Is the way a ring of beer spreads 
Through a white napkin and the scent of mildew
On the pages in the book you’ve half read
While the windows framing the street
Fog at the edges and the crêpe paper
Of a voice at the end of the bar
Is the closest music to you now—so look down,
Your hand trembles against the glass 
One finger tapping out a jitterbug 
—it flickers through you now,
Like something hidden by doors which swung
Open and shut in the dance halls beyond 
Ahoskie on Friday nights, a place which sounds
Further and further away as you say it
Where it never snows, only kind of teases a snow,
& the bartender is writing out the specials
& you look at this which will not last
& which weighs against your empty 
Pockets. Think of a time the sun 
Went one way from the shadows of oaks 
As they stretched and met the darkness 
Then the darkness was everywhere—
The onions and garlic in a pan darkened
& inside the mailbox across the street
The ink on unread letters darkened.
Pond Creek, a cooled filament beyond the meadow.
And the meadow darkened.
The broken fence and barbed wire darkened
Beside a single lane road—how the dark slept 
There and opened a heavy eye
As a car drove away with the high beams on
& the headlights darkened 
Deep in the same fog you’ve been wanting 
To push your finger through on the glass 
& to write your name though it is just mist
& an unfinished poem for time. 

Maybe all you’re owed on days like this 
Is to think back and on a life that isn’t yours.
Your mother is born in the Year of the Pig
While Louis Armstrong is drawn 
Through a crowd by white and black
Ponies, three boys in starched shirts
& dark ties holding the reigns
Of the simple carriage, and the crowd 
So close, the trumpet wanting
For breath and the sure touch on the pistons, 
For “Summertime”— the livin' is easy
Her mother sings in the dark
Kitchen and smokes Winstons 
Touching the sun faded wallpaper
While her child, your mother, sleeps
In the hospital, not even a palm, the machines
Breathing for her. You’ve come
In out of this rain to make up 
For the crimes of sawdust and branches
You haven’t cleared from the backyard,
A child or a trumpet waiting for breath—
For the dark notches carved to a lover’s name
& for taking this long to take a sip
Just watching the paper darken.