By then I’ve re-found my own body,
opened my pupils to whichever
species of light chooses to show itself,
watered my face. Stroked my soles
with my slippers’ cloth-field
in the cool seasons, pressed them
naked across polished wood in the warm.
Settled in a kitchen chair, the body
like two overlapped Ls replacing sleep’s
flat dithery squiggles. How it sighs
at that first sit, igniting
like office building lights at dawn.
The day’s given again, despite
the vast buffet of reasons
it might have arrived without me.
How is this with you?
Almost always, I leave you prone,
whisper my slowly assembling body
early from the bedroom. Often
a couple of hours stream by. I return
to lay my hand on your back,
take the chance that you might also
be ready to realign your nerves
and images, words, joints, viscera.
You might hum a little, or
you might tell me “I’m trying.”
I understand. Pulling the me together
in the face of again all that can feel
like nothing other than interrupting
sleep’s insistence with a few hours
of up and about. Every day, we stare
at monstrosities and can’t whistle
the world home again. Yet we do
make our tatters whole, resume our feet
because we still can. Mouth to mouth first,
then mouths to coffee and toasted
English muffins with olive oil spread,
to revive the word: morning.
David P. Miller’s collection, Bend in the Stair, was published by Lily Poetry Review Books in 2021. Sprawled Asleep was published by Nixes Mate Books in 2019. His poems have received Best of the Net and Pushcart nominations, and have appeared in Meat for Tea, Lily Poetry Review, Reed Magazine, About Place Journal, Solstice, Salamander, Tar River Poetry, SurVision, Vincent Brothers Review, and Nixes Mate Review, among other journals. His poems “Interview” and “And You” were included in an issue of Magma (UK) focused on teaching poetry to secondary school students. He is a member of Boston’s Jamaica Pond Poets.