A song has ended

I can hear this place thinking.  Coughing 

and creaking.  There is nothing spectacular.  

Just drapes and a table arrangement, 

which seeps after the edges and grows wild 

against its pattern.  But I am letting the coins, 

papers, bottles spill, so if this is encroachment, 

it has gone beyond me—it is part of me.

And indeed I am the only hollow thought

about this room.  I am the least likely to fill.  

Not to say I am empty.  Only that my eyes are 

two narrow bulbs, which scatter and ruminate 

and then, apt to automatic, scatter again.  

Somewhere, from another room, a phone is humming.  

Fist fighting nights of shepherd clarity.  Separating 

flimsy flings and clumsy knuckles.  A crooked neck, 

a growling belly.  The only difference between 

children and all those blues singers is that all 

those blues singers have forgotten what it was 

to simply sink their questions.  To will up 

their leviathan.  But to wail that greater beast.