Late Last Night

she penciled animals with her left hand:

dark pigs and dogs, but “Horses are too hard,”

she said. Self-conscious, with a diamond band,

a tight red dress, a round face acne-scarred,

she had bad teeth because she only brushed

the fronts. She kissed me. I smelled cigarettes,

her Heraclitean fire. Such moods! Blue-hushed,

to black, to blacker yet . . . a thousand yets.

And yet, she said she loved me: “You’re a good

man, just a little rough around the edges.”

I pledged that I’d live wilder if I could.

And then the moon above the cedar hedges . . . 

so white it blinded me till pale daylight.

I dreamed of my dead mother late last night.

--Thomas Zimmerman