I count the poems I have written
in my lifetime. The audiences

I have dazzled: those I loved, those I loved
only through art, and perhaps the cats

bathing themselves in the maze of city.
Then I remember how I try to feel

my way into humanness. Breathing in
twice as much on starlit evenings.

It must be good for some part of you.
Maybe the heart. Or the lungs. Maybe that ache

you threw down the creek is aching
its way to your doorstep to bang on your door

and introduce itself as a familiar dullness.
We all have a catalogue of pains

in the vast library of memory. 
A list of where you felt them last.

The first words you spoke after they left.
The ballads playing on all the radios switched on

in the vicinity of your humanness.
Forget forgetfulness. Annotate your sad life.

Someone else will take care of the ending. 
For now, look at the sky.

And breathe patiently.
And breathe impatiently.