Morning Couplets

Rain and sun together, candles sparking the corners;
intermittent stages of winter slide into spring.

He sleeps off the work, the night, and the sickness;
his body, a dark mound, a fifth grader stayed home.

My brain pounds against pavement; I am already
laced up in shoes, ready to race through puddles.

I pick at my mouth for words, to unclog some dam –
and only coffee drips from my lips; my dry well cracks.

A female clown and daisy-down, upside down frown;
I knew you’d eventually come around.

Claw marks in the table from some desperate escape,
after a new discovery gone wrong by the cat.

A fault in Gibraltar causes the earth to shift, a jolt,
possibly a move closer to home – a broken voyage.

There are no hard barriers – your sleep before I close
my book, your rising before I move a muscle, and the in-between.

When I think to stumble off my pillow, out from a warm night,
I am greeted by day-sleepers, curled up, who don’t talk to me otherwise.

The cats hunt loose thread, and anything that moves;
I chase after an early morning thought.