The Confounded Hour
By David P. Miller
In the hour between our planet’s first turn
toward the light of false dawn
and my no-turn-back planting of feet on the floor—
I play a baffled Theseus, winding back and across
stacked baroque buildings, daisy-chained hotel corridors,
forcing my leaden legs over rehashed tracks
through shopping malls like Piranesi’s dungeons,
stairs without stops in apartment buildings
not even Virgil could have mapped for Dante.
Weary but unsurprised to find myself again
behind a half-open half-door, without pants and ignored.
Or in yet another indescribable latrine.
Or leaping across a broken stairwell, gapped above
a multi-story drop, to reach a cot flat on the floor
in a honeycomb of little rooms swarmed by strangers.
My patch of planet turns enough, once again, to gain
full early daylight. I open eyes wide,
shut down that confounded hour’s
screw-loose search. There is our ceiling,
its homey plaster flakes.
Our tower of LP spines.
Beyond the doorsill, the yard-sale kitchen table
I could find blindfolded in a blackout.
Copyright © 2021 by David P. Miller.