Apology

The cosmos paused before the storm awoke,
And the sneeze teased, and the water waited.
The doorway’s torpid tension never broke
Between out and in. The music faded.
My home’s moment of respiratory
Crisis, the pendulum’s pause at the rhyme
Of its smile, a gray hour’s purgatory
Implying the absolute. On ticked time,
Her fretful fingers swinging make-believe
Rings around the hole where I watched the lights
Fade on and off. Then the air coughed, the sieve
Strained, and fingers danced on keys in the night.

Your image clouds with my trembling exhale—
In the storm’s static I raise my shirt-tail.