My Morning Thing

I woke up for once feeling 
pretty good and that meant
all the usual pain was barely
mentionable and I thought
I might have had one decent
dream to try and recreate

but none of that lasted long.

I did the morning thing: got up,
put out the trash, fed the pets,
tried not to wake up the house,
had fifty more thoughts about 

creating a better world, tried to
translate them from the language
my dream head speaks to 
English, failed and failed
and failed, dared to read

the news, read the comments,
became the comments, held back
from commenting and then 
the pain of this age rushed in 
like water through a breached levee,
flood in the form of questions: 

it’s really not going to be all right,
is it? I won’t see a better future or
world no matter what I do, will I?
It’s not personal, is it? It’s not about
me or anything at all to do with me, is it?

I took my worn drenched self back to bed.
I took a long time falling back to sleep
because that’s my morning thing: buying
into an illusion, working, sagging,
slipping, drowning — 

all before the first cup of coffee.