Jet lag

The birds and squirrels
have lost all their fear,
they expect every hand
to contain a meal,
and in my head
there’s a dump truck
backing up the street,
issuing its warning
in a strange land
where beeps have been replaced
by the loud squawks of crows,
it’s 3 in the morning
and I’m wide awake,
sipping my second cup of coffee,
expecting to be rewarded
for remembering to breathe
when it’s not something
I have to remember to do,
unlike feeding the dog,
or, as they say in England,
feeding the dog,
the same phrase,
but I bet you heard it
in your mind with an accent,
I’ve crossed the Atlantic,
the Pacific, the International Date Line,
but part of me is still there,
walking the wobbly stones
of Edinburgh, of Glasgow, of Bath,
wondering at the footprints
that have smoothed the paths
of rough hewn rock
down to a polished gloss,
like a human river
of heavy tongues,
sloppy and ignorant,
yet as incessant
as the passage of time,
a silent witness
like a needle
pulling a highway for thread,
pinning this moment
to the previous moment,
conjoining the now
to the then,
and sometimes I feel
like the needle,
like the road,
like the two points
of cloth accepting passage
of that piercing probe,
all things gathered and held
by the same imperceptible
strand of when and how,
second on top of impossible second,
but here I am anyway,
woolgathering,
trying to pin myself
to this page,
to pass my breath
through the eyes of your eyes.