For the Night People

A little celebration:
it is six a.m. and I am not sick.

Each of your doors breathes peace. So far
(I'm testing morning) coffee obeys gravity's law.
Streetside, brakes screech as always: the paper's here. A bird
hits a pane, not hard, and our cat apparently sleeps.

I'm testing morning for you. The news mixes
concept car, torture refined, smallpox alive, small war
enlarged, cement truck overturned on the Narrows Bridge with importance
of finding language for pain. There's a sheen on things. Names

shrink-wrap them for afterlives. There's no more
running for yours. On your lives, I'm swearing,
I say guaranteeing for life's time a little
celebration. For you,

did God die? (It's good to know when you love.) One
night, the "J" writer scrolled back creation to dust.
Then mist. Next, a man-doll with uneven ribs, Eve,
and their God-potter all breathed.

Much later, our Apple ticked forever to say: Carefully Saving.
Strange—we kept things in Apples with glass eyes,
we who didn't know what to make of joys, we who can't help
but in morning make noise.

Copyright © 2007 Muriel Nelson All rights reserved
from Beloit Poetry Journal
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission