A Small Room In Aspen

Stains on the casements,

dustmotes, spiderless webs.

No chairs, and a man waking up,

or he's falling asleep

Many first novels begin

with the hero waking up,

which saves their authors

from writing well about sleep.

His life is the only novel

about him. Mornings

he walks past the park:

Tai Ch'i students practicing

like slow lorises.

A room on the second floor.

He'd dreamed of a ground floor

room, an insistent cat

at the door, its mouth pink

with wrath he couldn't salve

and grew to hate. All afternoon

he's a cloud that can't rain.

There's no ordinary life

in a resort town, he thinks,

though he's wrong: it laces

through the silt of tourists

like worm life. At dusk

the light rises in his room.

A beautiful day, all laziness

and surface, true without

translation. Wherever I go

I'm at home, he thinks,

smug and scared both,

fierce as a secret,

8,ooo feet above sea level.

The dark on its way down

has passed him, so he seems

to be rising, after the risen

light, as if he were to keep watch

while the dark sleeps,

as if he and it were each

other's future and children.