Work has been too exhausting to think up a good entry, but I feel guilty about leaving things blank for more than a few days. So I guess I will just post a poem that reflects my mood.


BETWEEN ANGELS

Between angels on this earth
absurdly between angels, I
try to navigate

in the bluesy middle ground
of desire and withdrawal
in the industrial air
among the bittersweet

efforts of people to connect
make sense, endure
The angels out there
what are they?

Old helpers, half-believed,
or dazzling better selves
imagined,

that I turn away from
as if I preferred
all the ordinary, dispiriting
tasks at hand?

I shop in the cold
neon aisles
thinking of pleasure,
I kiss my paycheck

a mournful kiss goodbye
thinking of pleasure
in the evening replenish

my drink, make a choice
to read or love or watch
and increasingly I watch
I do not mind living

like this. I cannot bear
living like this.
Oh, everything's true
at different times

in the capacious day
just as I don't forget
and always forget

half the people in the world
are dispossessed.
Here chestnut oaks
and tenements

make their unequal claims.
Someone thinks of betrayal.
A child spills her milk;
I'm on my knees cleaning it up--

sponge, squeeze, I change nothing
just move it around
The inconsequential floor
is beginning to shine.

Stephen Dunn