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That day, you woke late and rubbed your eyes seven times
to drive the cinders away, as you considered the to-do list
that kept you up until almost midnight on the night before.
Fastening your underwear so the buttons came out wrong,
required you to stiff-finger the skewed row back into line.
Then you slid socked feet through the new Levi-knockoffs
shipped in from Sod at the cost of one entire week's wage
that were winter sized enough to tuck in a wool shirt thick
as plate before you dived under a thick shepherd's sweater
and swam back to the surface, settling for a cap with flaps.
Groomed piecemeal solely on the opinion it was too soon
in autumn to wobble your quilted jacket out of its packing
into a dry birth despite a cuttingly cold of the crystal night,
you folded the shortlist of good intentions within a pocket.
Then, you slicked back your hair until its feral lick agreed
not to hob beyond your scalp like a willful shock of straw,
and cocked your pale face before the bathroom mirror, left,
then, right, as a quizzical owl sites a mouse to pass muster
on a nose freshly freed of blemish by a blue-bottled potion
brewed up in Cincinnati, before you hesitated at your door
to hop about while screwing a foot your fleece-lined boots
with the worn heels we recognized on CNN, early editions
of the New York Times and the sleek sheen of a magazine,
which showed you sprawled near the cheap quilt comforter
the UN investigators left behind as both shroud and marker
to keep track of the bodies scattered along a timbered verge
of woods so pristine, we sighed in passing each newsstand,
from the splendor of it all and the very idea you'd been shot
by a man who'd sat up in bed the night before to make a list
much a your own save for "eggs" where you wrote "cheese"
and would wake tomorrow to bumble the things he needed
to make right before he donned Levis shipped in from Sod.
©2003, Philip Havey
Phil Havey was a Freedom Rider before he became active in various theatrical protests during the Vietnamese War and a labor leader in the Department of Education.
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