The Museum of 3:00 am
This is when they visit you
all the gathered pieces
of everything.
They come rushing in
in groups, in squads,
in platoons, in cliques.
And the occasional
straggler, too, some guy
wearing an interesting cap.
They have a lot they want
to discuss with you, about
the future of the oceans,
the way things turn sideways
before they fall, how you
are still afraid of the high dive
(and what that says about you).
Why you are alone.
You ask them to back off
please, to give you some space
but then they come back with
“space is the place” quoting
Sun Ra, and “Space, the final
Frontier,” quoting Star Trek.
“Please, please, already,” you say,
“I need rest.” But they are
adamant visitors, not just drop ins;
they’re carrying picnic baskets
and to do lists that scroll down
like Rapunzel hair.
“Order those opera tickets,”
they command, “Eat more fruit!”
And you, poor soul, listen up
until, finally, sleep pops up
and grabs you by the pajama lapel.
“Come this way,” it whispers,
“I know a secret exit ramp
from the museum.”
It’s a slide and you climb
on and let yourself go
slowly down, then faster,
into your pillow, into some
little snip of abstraction,
a not-annoying dream,
and then tomorrow.
L’esprit de L’escalier
what was not said
can become a shadow
ghosting around
like a small curse,
an underbreath mutter
some words, the lazy
things, just wait around
until it’s too late,
missing the train
of the moment,
missing the party.
missing the curtain call
and the audition
that time a woman told me
I could not take off work
for pre-natal care; that time
a man told me I need to
somehow, expensively,
fix my teeth, that time
a colleague said I should
let him take my daughter
on a canoe trip; that time
someone smashed my car,
took my dog, dropped me
off alone, in snow, far
from home.
Those times I was put on hold
when calling help lines
the time we waited hours
in an ER, bleeding, expiring,
holding onto vanishing hope
and all the other times
when I should have located
those sentences, and spoken
up, but didn’t
when all the right words
slunk away, went into hibernation
and would not re-appear
now I am carrying them
around like extra clothes
I’ll never wear, in the small
satchel of my life
I still see them, hear them
calling me out, wasted bastards,
waiting for the past to circle
back so they can have their
moment, rush out into the air
and do that important dance
they missed out on
which I am pretty sure will
never happen
yet here they are with all the others,
the I’m sorrys and what the fucks
and you sucks
and the elaborate ones
which quote some
version of Baldwin:
“be careful what you set
your heart upon”; “it is easier
to cry than change”;
“fires can’t be made
with dead embers”;
“it is expensive to be poor”;
“love is growing up”
Cloud Mountain
watch the sun climb
down the cloud mountain
step by step, slowly
navigating the gauzy terrain
as if it is the first time it
ever traveled this route,
as if it’s nervous it might
trip and tumble into some
cloud ravine, or cloud crevasse,
don’t worry sun, you’ve
got this, you might think,
or you are the sun, for god’s sake,
but watching there, that
tentative pull through
scattershot mist, through
the almost liquid, the puff
and tangle pulling down.
like blinds, a semi-dark,
it becomes clear:
no matter how often a journey
is traveled, every step contains
some new kind of effort,
a tender center moment of risk.
There is always that fear
when climbing, of going sideways,
stepping off the train into the gap,
twisting, breaking, falling,
losing your way in the world.
Elizabeth Cohen‘s poems have been published in Patterson Review, Kalliope, Hawaii Review, Yale Review, Blue Mesa, San Antonio Review and other literary venues. She is the author of five books of poetry, most recently, Mermaids of Albuquerque. She lives in New Mexico, with her dog, Layla.
Image: Vatican Museums, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
