Solitude isn’t a gate that opens.
 –Norman Dubie

I volunteered for the nightshift,
so don’t surprise me, Emma,
with your tribe of goats.
I can’t sleep, and if I could,
I’d dream of standing
on a snow-topped mountain
to view the valley below.
Emma, I need solitude,
not couriers from Eros
or a copper cup
filled with black coffee.
I’d rather watch reruns
of Alfalfa and his gang
chasing geese or wait
for angels to hold umbrellas
for me—I doubt if I’d
leave with them: my soul
has too many scars,
and gunshots on the beach
don’t help. God, I miss
the lack of terror now.
Windmills circle in my ears,
and I need to call a shrink,
but my throat is a cipher.
No, I want my black bones
to heal, ice to drop from the sky
like frozen tears, and a vase filled
with scarlet pimpernel adorning
the window sill. Then I could
savor a slice of pumpkin pie
before I write of the last Indian
massacre in my lonely notebook.

—

David Spicer has had poems in Alcatraz, Gargoyle, Third Wednesday, Reed Magazine,  Ploughshares, The American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. The author of Everybody Has a Story and four chapbooks, he is scheduled to have From the Limbs of a Pear Tree (Flutter Press) released in the Fall of 2017.