Thinking of Eurydice at midnight

where the light struck
                    HD

My Siamese cat's left a brown
snake, its back broken, on my desk.
The underground throbs outside my window.
The black highway of the river's crinkled by a light
westerly on its last legs. I want to give praise
to the coming winter, but the problem
of belief flares and buckles under
the lumpy syntax. The Unelected
President's on the radio again,
laying waste to the world.

Faith — that old myth. I drag up
impossible meanings and double divisions
of love and betrayal, light and dark. Eurydice.
Where on earth am I after all these years?
A possum eats crusts on the verandah,
standing up on its hind legs.
My weakness can't be measured.
My head contains thousands of images —
slimy mackerel splashing about in the murk.
My failures slip through fingers pointed
at the best night of my life. This one.

The one mist falls, my head floats in the stream
of thinking. Eurydice. Did I fumble? Maybe
I was meant to be the moon's reflection,
and sing darkness like the nightjar.
Why wouldn't I detest this place, where the
sun shines on settlers and their heirs
and these heirlooms I weave
from blond silk?

Copyright © 2004 Robert Adamson All rights reserved
from Reading the River
Bloodaxe Books/Dufour Editions
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission