Still, in the stale cigarette smell of motel rooms, I wake if a child coughs next door, my palms sweaty with impotent responsibility. Tonight, home for a weekend, you cough in the next room sever my dreams and wake me to frayed ends of the loosed cord. 3 AM. Turn on the light. Read. Seeing the light beneath my door you wander in to sit on the end of the bed and we are held an hour in the lamp's circle making a reef knot of our loose ends until we slip from each other again and, the light turned out, drift separately into dawn. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...JOHN KEATS (1) by GEORGE GORDON BYRON WITH A NANTUCKET SHELL by CHARLES HENRY WEBB THE VOW OF WASHINGTON by JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER THE SONG OF THE ILL-BELOVED; TO PAUL LEAUTARD by GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE MORTAL JEALOUSY by PHILIP AYRES |