I write away this morning and my life.
Merlot appeals and all the afternoon
goes gliding down a river that is rife
with might-have-beens and barkings at the moon.
These words aren’t foreign; they make perfect sense
in the places and vague humours where I live
among imagined pasts and precedents.
The wine ignites quiet memories that give
patinas to reflected pallid lives.
I tell them nightly till I think they’re true.
Perhaps they are. Realities have size,
the way gods do, depending on how you
describe them, and on how much true belief
you muster for them. Aspirin brings relief.