Lowell

It was as if a stormy hell had opened up
slowly. The deep shadows were a drop
of loose leaf pictures in the past
of a magazine. There was the last
post of a siren call and the phone
hung from its perch like a bleached bone.
My head pounded, the blood at all costs
punching. There were tears at the lost
and a driving car shone mechanical light
across the bed, through the shades. Right
then I rolled over, he rolled away: a sight
of what was to come when he left me alone
in this dark hotel room with its air-con drone.
Can love be? I asked and smoked, is it air?
I thought. Stringing the pieces with hair
wound up like the snake in the tree,
the apple seed deep within what was me.