Off Calendar

[zirconium]

I'd hoped to stay in bed, but duty called,
but had I not been out I wouldn't have stopped
for the slow treat of a tall peppermint mocha.

Although I had the pew-bench all to myself,
the shop seemed full of congregants --
a grizzled gentleman holding forth on Churchill,
younger creatures conferring on clothes for clubbing,

and who-knows-what-fresh-hell-now unspooling
across the phone and laptop screens. I'm too far away
to see what's being said, and I am fine with that,

for right now all I want is to steep in the sweetness
of sitting still, of studying glass
being both filter and mirror, night-edged research
sharing its margins with daybreak, the sky

the pink of the Christmas cactus blooms at my house,
the plants flowering on, beyond the carols and candles.