"Black Water" by Joe Bolton

It happens like this

   Over and over:

A light breaks on the shore

   Of a black water

Hemmed in by cliffs of red

   Stone with faces

Carved into the faces, and you

   See another face

–The face of the remembered–

   Rising from the water,

Descending from the sourceless light,

   And cannot call it out,

Because now you are the light breaking

   Over the black water,

And you are the black water, and you

   Are the face they make.

And then you wake up, and light

   A cigarette,

And you are in time again, the world

   Of time and outside

It is Tuesday, and early June,

   And 1985.

And it would be your wedding day,

   Were it three years ago;

And it would be your anniversary

   Had she not left you . . .

But it is simply a Tuesday, in June,

   In 1985,

And you have woken up alone to the life

   You live alone,

And the workmen down the block are hammering

   The last of the dream from you.

And what work will there be

   For you today,

Dreamer whose dream the world

   Of time has torn away?

—What task to occupy your hands

   That tremble?

Only this resurrection of the grief

   That sweats the drink

Out of you and makes you thirst

   For more—

Makes you dress up to go out and drink,

   Then undress to lie down.

And you will lie down, and you will be

   The light breaking

Over the black water, and you will be

   The black water.