So a little change of pace.
This is a newer poem I want to interrupt poems
from this book with because I don't
think I've ever read it aloud when
TC Tolbert was in the room.
This is a poem that I wrote for TC
after a bike ride that we took about this time last year.
It's true.
It's a true poem.
Poems can be true.
It's called "Night Now," for TC, "Night Now."
"When things get bad enough, I know
this rock, boulder, rather, artificial, actually,
west side of a wash along Aviation east of Swan.
The concrete shell at one end is busted open
and the rebar pried wide enough for someone
to enter the rock headlong.
Inside, if you clear the bottles, and wadded rags,
and short stack cans of Pringles,
the cocoon sleeps two comfortably, or one.
When things get so bad, there's one place past nowhere else
to go.
Looks like a rock with a rib cage rusting, length of a man
your stature.
Get in.
I know you know.
The worst is over."