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Each Day I Wake
(July 13, 2022)
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1 /
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I wake up differently each day I wake​
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Some days it’s out of breath I wake​​
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And other days it’s from the dread
Of burdens unfulfilled
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And some days still, these modest muscles
Kink and clench to wake me
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These hapless organs, too,
Can strain and push me out of sleep
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It’s always push and pull,​
From wake, to yonder, then here again
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2 /
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I recoil sullenly from the trembling shivers
Of my daily leaving​
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I linger passively in the warmth of life
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My jaw and shoulder press into my lumpy cot​​
My bony fingers burrow into tender mingling folds​​
My ear and nostril drown into the quiet depths​
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My wing lifts round to shroud my eyes
And vanish me
To the remaining moments of the night
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3 /
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Discordant are the voices
That older hearts can hear
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The secret whimpers of a suffocated wish​
The pacified regret of misled youth
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A murmur from a lung, a feeble thirst​​
Fateful deteriorations and frail connects
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A thinning shoulder-blade,
More and more translucent,
Like lucid cartilage,​
Now at last lets in the cosmic light
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