how getting here becomes

how getting here becomes

the day that plays you, a lute,

a zither brief between the legs

or the fingers, pulled clouds

raked through

all the way like after a drunk

or a good spurt of luck like

how a woman pulls a comb

through her hair

and can’t help but stop

to wonder how did it

get to there how did it,

you, moon through the window

months and months

absent and this

chance glance this sitting

hard and heavy here

halfway through winter

with the worst slung low

out of state and maybe

maybe if the wind’s right,

arriving by nightfall or next week

if Manitoba if Atlanta if Akron

meet up for a threesome

or in the least an agreement

before leaving no name

at the desk and no hope

of ever coming back

but the play of it all the way

good random sex gets its own room

and its own way and leaves

you, moon,

a shift on the motel floor, a drip

in the bathroom sink trap

not yet pulled down the throat

of the gassy blow-back

just sitting maybe to dry there

in the brown iron of a thousand days

just like this

one.