I look out the window onto a ground dressed with sun,

poor shreds of undistinguished trees, here and there

sharp glass flashing, dirty raccoons shoving by

more often than should be likely here downtown,

on their way to cloudy mysteries.  It’s night though

and something in me refuses to see the outside

reduced to colorless bone of itself, in bully glare

from the still lot behind the link fence.  Something?

I know what the something is:  fever, mirroring sun,

collecting it in my cheekbones and nose, a red cross.

Is it the coming of that fever?  Today’s been a week

since I left the building, pushed the button to cross

the street, afterwards may have touched my face.

I doubt it—more probably some minor flush of stress,

momentary, unthreatening.  I cling to probability

like a religion, lighting one mind candle after another

till the night is a burning church.  Till it’s the day.

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