Yestermorrow

Hallelujah, it’s nobody’s birthday!

Nobody’s wedding and nobody’s wake!

For once the glib calendar’s dumb.

These brave hours have sloughed off their date.

No unions are striking, no voters are polled,

though if anything dawn has come early.

While the coffee is yet to be ground,

our displeasures dissolve prematurely.

We’re a people with bleachers to get to,

outlets to enter, entrees to eat,

but this morning it’s clear to anyone:

nothing’s planned and there’s nowhere to be.

If the wind at the backs of our minds is persuasive,

still, each destination feels wrong.

We wander outside in pajamas

to stand at the edge of our lawns.

Hallelujah, that here on mortality’s turf

the daily’s been soundly defeated!

The diaries are shredded inside us.

The dockets have balked and retreated.

Any vows we have made to each other

melt away in our mouths like confections

and at once they’re replaced by the knowledge

that at last we’re immune to deception.

The day picks up its skirts with its eyes closed,

eventful, though nothing will count.

I hear fireworks rebound one street over.

The de Whitts, in their front yard, make out.

As local balloonists are coasting their baskets

to rest in the neighborhood park

our children eject from the tire swings

and slowly tear heaven apart.

Even when dusk sizzles through the azaleas

the day feels unwilling to end.

Stars flicker back out in the cypress.

The moon seems inclined to descend.

Hallelujah, the networks have cancelled the news

with no scandals, invasions, or earthquakes!

What’s next we’ll discover in time,

when eternity turns into Thursday.

“Yestermorrow” first appeared in Poetry Northwest, vol. 12, no. 1, 2017.