MUSE

I used to imagine you
as the sound of falling water,
then I woke up one morning
with someone else’s
heart breaking in my chest.
I couldn’t bear to look
when the colonel cried, “Bayonets!”
and men without an eye
or nose or arm or leg charged.
I knelt down and drank
from the dog’s bowl
just to have something
to write about.

ANSWERED PRAYER

The drapes have been drawn
against the daylight.
Someone knocks again,
urgently this time.
It could be strangers in masks
or baby-faced angels
or just someone come to tell me
if the world is where I left it
the night before.

BECKETT, A POCKET BIOGRAPHY

It was a period prone
to long silences.
Carpet layers crawled
with knives and hammers
over the concrete floor
of evening. Sunshine,
you said, looking up
from a whiskey,
is an overrated virtue.

Profile: Howie Good