borrowed jacket

that new years eve it rained
and I said
something witty and unrememberable enough
about gravity, these days, and all that water.

the wet-blown silhouettes of trees
brushed and flung at the semi-black.
I listened for spaces that I knew were there
in between but couldn’t find them.

white (that white of fire and dying)
dolloped sometimes the sky’s pale dark
and sometimes wired it. leaving the party
I went out into a blue moon’s park.

in the splatter I walked, afraid then not.
of memory, people, and people with memories.
I was a nearly-drenched and clinging thing
in that wispy, once-crisp, borrowed jacket.

still forty-five minutes and I am sorry.
I’m desultory and I am sore.
I am sorried and worried and vision-poor.
it’s the clock coming ‘round. it’s the new black book

for another frightening, undocumented passage.
if the planet’s mass weren’t quite so massive
we’d aim out there a sickle-thought
to hook us, roaring, far and up.

I made a decision between inside and not.
necessary skeleton turned to light and salt
and then insistent rain sending morse from god
became orbiting blood.