For all our anxiety about running out of time
we spend a lot of it composing grand things in our mind
that we won’t say out loud.
There’s a joke I think you’d like.
I can’t start it - I won’t get the ending right.
I need a page to hang on to, the steadying hand of graphite.
How do people just toss words out into cold mid-air?
It feels reckless and profligate,
like leaving your kids at various bus-stops.
I would fret about these moments more often,
but we have our Golden Hour, our Awakenings’ scene.
(DeNiro dancing with Penelope Ann Miller in the canteen).
Stories come easy then. Funny ones, your cousin George ones,
and my secrets, that were so well masked,
I didn’t know I had them until you asked.
It is in the hour before we fall asleep.
Sometimes two hours. Often three.
We don’t do too much counting these days.
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