After sunset, after a day spent Wrangling words in their pens; (OED in twenty odd, heavy volumes, Roget’s corner shop for this word, Its cousins and their afternoon shadows,

A quite quarrel with wife, conducted civilly Using only stiff and properly starched words; Hell was the strongest one used, and she must Have meant writer’s hell, so clearly described By Signor Dante, where I am and perhaps will

Remain, until I can improve These crude manners I am diseased with; Not those involving how I hold silver in my paws, But that of breaking conversations abruptly To scratch on papers like an itchy cat)

I find myself standing by myself And a few shore birds: ducks, geese, Gulls, as they head to their places Of roost, as light drains and darkness Enters, carrying with it no memory

Of what light had wrought – bread and wine On the table, dandelions with their tiny yellow Flashlights in the grass, the way her wrists Decanted photons as we were drinking coffee And quarrelling, quietly, on the porch

And all those words that are still stuck on My tongue like so many burrs I might have collected Wandering in the wild. O Jenny! To drop These words, along with this tongue and its Distractions, and these subsequent clumsy apologies

And dissolve in you, as light has dissolved In the water, leaving no trace of itself In this night's shivering dark.