Fourteen

Friday evening, streaming TV
Almost drift off, I shut the screen
And try to sleep before your shift starts

You said it's peaceful
As you're breathing in your wristwatch
We're finding meaning for all these rituals
Their ticktock (ticktock)
Our own religious rites and texts

Sacred moments we've perfected
Give direction
Make a connection between
This life and those mysteries
That dare deny our death

I float into snowdrifts
Find it as if by precognition
Every ghost turned frozen when the blizzard hit
Every ghost-print frozen in the blizzard hidden
Like a mystic by some visit shown a vision
Thrown on a pilgrimage and went there at home
You inside the kitchen sitting

Into midnight, Mid-December with its sensors smoking
And the streetlights incense embers
And each center glowing golden
Woven in the filaments of silver
Winter spilling from the firmament
Beholden to my mission as I go

Out to the store for wine
Same route every time
My path in winter pasture
One fracture climbing up the bone
And a cold wind blows into Michigan
And a new skin slowly grows on the skeleton
The slowly sentient where I go shuffling slowly and always penitently

My mission heaven-sent and
My charge Old Testament to roam
With shoulders permanently yoked
Inside an endless desert home
I know you're sitting alone
While your professors lectures play on that Dictaphone cassette
The tape his ever-present home

Color-coding your notes
Your written sacred scripture
It's your cuneiform, your hieroglyphs, your Aramaic
Home where I'm finally close, where I'm approaching
In my old prints ghosting alone
And I can see you through the window frame
Pulling your hair and getting anxious

Climb the steps of your porch light
Reach for the door and open
Frozen thaw out in the warmth home
Cradling wine, let every worry and your burdens all be mine
And be vanquished 'cause I find endless meaning in these
Sacred rites and routines that have you awake with me each morning
In the nighttime fall asleep

(And ticktock and ticktock)
(And we drift off, and we drift off)
(And we wake up, and we wake up)