ANTI-AUBADE
You shuffle through your waking house as though
the miracle of dawn does not deserve
acknowledgement, as though the way you go
downstairs, through doorways in the dark, and swerve
around the furniture, is nothing more
than habit, as if comfort doesn’t guide
your feet across the heated hardwood floor.
Your stomach turns at stirs of life outside.
You’re bracing for the dread of this new week,
though really you don’t know a dreadful thing.
You scroll through lifting darkness. What you seek
is anybody’s guess. The song you sing
turns out to be appropriated blues,
and genocides are other people’s news.
—from Poets Respond
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David Rosenthal: “I write early in the morning, so I tend to write about the dawn a lot. I also get most of my news in the early morning, scrolling through news outlets and social media. Those two elements of my morning routine intersect in this poem.”
