Jeopardy

The rug skips from underneath
my mind, as night wakes
to the concrete's gnashing of the teeth
either side of the window.
Their coloured afterlives,
a knuckled-in feeling of
grandiose, unstained
because stains are only black
and grey. I look far, and the farthest
I could: until I note the solitary hill,
or the swanning blackbird, the moon tied
to my shoe-string or some random reduction.
Life then moves to the street, to the
cornor-slicing offices, and somewhere
in the middle,I look back twice because
men usually die
on their way home.Because on your way
home, you assume that jeopardy is insincere,
that the invisible are so, because their
work is done.No.A lot more has
to be done, tomorrow and the
day after that.The road travelled
and the one left behind do not match.
But work has to be done - a lot
more than yesterday. Yesterday
when the blackbird unsparingly
rose, the hill threw back its head
to the sun, reduction totalled
to an additive and shoe-strings came not
undone.Work, though, has to
be done, where the stage is set,
and comeuppance is targeted, where
hustlers and doctors do not meet
except in their dreams.