Broken Time

[rejectomorph]

Surely the power had gone out I thought when I woke in a dark room. The clock, electric, must be wrong. But I had only fallen asleep while it was daylight and night fell before the lamp had been turned on or the windows opened to cool the house. It took a few minutes for me to remember when I was. Oh, the unfed cats. Portia had been outside when I unexpectedly napped, so hadn't been available to wake me up.

They were all waiting, either in the garage or on the back porch. I let Portia in and fed the lot of them, but I'm still disoriented. For a while I had thought it was nearly Monday morning, and even the sight of the large moon rising through the eastern pines has not entirely convinced me that it isn't. It's past my dinner time and I feel like having my morning orange juice. What am I to do with me?




Sunday Verse

Getting Away with It

by Jack Gilbert


We have already lived in the real paradise.
Horses in the empty summer street.
Me eating the hot wurst I couldn't afford,
in frozen Munich, tears dropping. We can
remember. A child in the outfield waiting
for the last fly ball of the year. So dark
already it was black against heaven.
The voices trailing away to dinner,
calling faintly in the immense distance.
Standing with my hands open, watching it
curve over and start down, turning white
at the last second. Hands down. Flourishing.