“Blackboard Sky”

 

c. 2025 Rod Ice

All rights reserved

(11-25)

 

A crescent ghost on a blackboard sky

Peering through the window, lighting my bed

Streaming an idea into closed eyes, and a covered head

As I am unplugged and unaware

What a surprise to be roused

In this room where I am safely housed

Among the pines

Narrow lots arranged at an earlier time

Now remain in a testament to the design

Of fortune seekers who oddly established this rural outpost

Far from the crowded walks, east of Cleveland

In a spot unloved and unknown

Their concept thrived on a basic need

To acquire a home, affordably

Thus, the blue-collar masses from Lake Erie arrived

In wrinkled work clothes

Booted and belted, in denim and reeking of Wild Irish Rose

Their preferences were notably meek

Having existed on meager sums

Pennies in their pockets, these artful alums

Of a hard-knocks institution

A concrete curriculum of working-class absolution

In their stead, I tossed and turned

Groaning in the dim glow of this familiar satellite

This orb, hued in gray and white

Slim and slight, overhead

This was the beginning, at an unreasonable hour

It made me sit up and shake my head

This epiphany in my bed

If I had been more bold

I might have scribbled down the verse that hung in sight

At that fruitful moment of the overnight

Yet I cursed being awake

And sat in a chair at the end of our couch

Rubbing my eyes

At half past one o’clock

Still groggy, and unconcerned with the tease

Of creative energies

That were surging through the unconscious haze

I might have begun my day

Early, and impulsively quick

But the irony was heavy and thick

So much that after a cool sip of water, I returned to my first cause

To be knocked out, loaded

Slumbering, like a summertime Santa Claus

Surfing waves of oblivion

With my purpose, no more

I began to sniffle and snore

Blindly counting hours with no timepiece for an aid

On my mattress, I lay

Stretched out and twisting at my joints, until fatigue took hold

Bare feet, and barely covered

Strangely comfortable in the cold

This routine rattled my circadian rhythm

Leaving me lost in the vacuum of naught

Without even the tempered ticking of a clock

For a metronome

To keep my heartbeat steady and measured

I drifted and dozed throughout the span

Of this adventure, a silent, solitary man

Until mercy came with the sunrise

Which stiffened a resolve to again open my eyes

And there, waiting at the nightstand, so close at hand

Was the nugget of nicety

Given from an anonymous muse

As I had wandered on a cosmic cruise

Mentally, metaphorically

Headed to the point of discovery

The crossroads of a pen and tablet

Sitting at my desk

And ready