AUBADE FOR ONE DISMAYED
Half-Alice in her milky, silky sheets
almost awake to the ache of another day
rebounding from her beaming ceiling,
grieved leaving the comforts of the night—
the snuggled pillow and the shy bedfellow
a fuzzy dream had borne and then withdrawn
at the intrusion of the hooligan light.
She closed her eyes once more to place the face,
so familiar and, yes, similar
to that of someone she had always known.
Perhaps she’d find a name if once again
she slipped into the deep warm sea of sleep.
And then a voice called Alice and she saw
a woman waving, craving her return.
—from Rattle #32, Winter 2009
Tribute to the Sonnet
__________
Ron Offen: “One day, sitting in my high school library writing doggerel to pass the time, my best friend whispered suddenly, ‘You know what we should be? Poets!’ It was one of those revelations one instantly knows is momentous and right; and I have not stopped writing poems since. A few lines of the poem presented here arrived about 3 a.m., forcing me to get out of bed to set them down.”
