For Absolution

Rising again at night under a half-lit moon,
past sleep and the morning still hours away,
I find my way in darkness, following an old habit,
to the working place I have made for myself
beneath the spiral stairs of this apartment.

From his dreams, the man in my bed
moves to the hollow shape of myself left behind
and rests his hand in the place I last was.
I smile as I watch him, Sleeping, he whispers beneath his breath
A conversation with a monarch, a grizzled cat, and a spy.

What fears or weariness keep me from my sleep
I couldn't say. Same old unfinished business in my life,
some imagined or long-forgotten sin, those old regrets
we're never done with until they're done with us.
The interest we pay on the debts only we can remember.

I lean back in my chair enjoying the moonlight and
take from the pile whatever book comes easily to hand,

Rumi, Neruda, my journal
Too tired to read, too undone to write. And so I hold my pen for it's
comfort sake,
something familiar and unchanged, unchanging,
a sense of time and place in a world drowsing.

Here there is a kind of absolution, a sanctuary.
Here I can hear everything. The slow dripping of the kitchen faucet
mingled with the refrigerator's hum
keeping a lazy rhythm with the ticking of my mind as
I try to lay the past’s whispered voices one by one
in their proper place.

until I am forgiven everything -for tonight at least-
and forgive everything that needs it, too, from me.
And give a certain thanks to all the other days and nights
that brought me here and made me what I am;
a woman past sleep, listening to a man dream.