I’m awake too early again
in a semi-dark room where next
to me, my wife sleeps with a child-
like snore and my head is full
of this inadequacy and that
disquietude that come curling
up like smoke from a trash fire
& somewhere a woodpecker
is pecking at my cottonwood skull
sapping my potential
that’s when I know
I should getthefuck up and watch
the sky bluing in the east
and with a little luck a cloudless
horizon promising a measure of clarity
I waist another half-hour with thoughts
darting like sports cars between
trucks on a freeway until I finally
notice the single frond of fern
reaching for the sun through the window,
like a lover’s hand, so sure is the want—
93 million miles this light and heat
have come for me and my maidenhair,
how can I not shine.
Frank H. Coons is a veterinarian and poet living Colorado. His work has appeared in The Eleventh Muse, The Santa Fe Literary Review, Pilgrimage, Pacific Review, Pinyon Review, El Malpais, Fruita Pulp, the Eleventh Muse, Caesura, and elsewhere. His work has appeared in numerous anthologies, and in 2019 was nominated for a Pushcart prize. His first collection of poems, a chapbook, Finding Cassiopeia was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award in 2013. His second book of poems, Counting in Dog Years was released in 2016. Both books were published by Lithic Press.
