She comes around here, not often, As a visiting professor lecturing On some rare disease which afflicts

Only me. The season would be fall With its dense fingerprints Covering every inch of ground.

This is when the disease began, Jumping not from monkey to man But from something more abstract To something alive:

It came from the light and the wind Which kept shifting the light, a morning Disco strobe under which we groped for Each other’s mouth.

The symptoms? Blackbirds singing In the dead of night, broken pencil points Covering sheets of unformed words,

Pacing the avenues, as if awaiting something That is about to happen, knowing very well It rarely does. Foolishness.

They say it can be controlled, this plague, By dousing oneself regularly, till a cure Is found. She is the expert obviously

An authority that others quote, But who never answers my calls. The telephone rings and rings.