When a call comes in the middle
always
in the middle of something
else
edging our way
through thistle, sedge, slate.
Dishes done wearing a shirt
of hair; silk —
out
in nature’s world or man’s
surrounded by day-flies, May lilies, sludge —


a clearing
inside our skin, maybe within our clothes,
we wait listening,
like an animal. Hear
the ringing
phone or some other blunt instrument
and here we go again
without our consent,
daub and flail, a sweaty contessa
confessing to swatting the almost-spent
why? That question. To ask it
after a certain age appears
unseemly. Wrings the tongue. Some etiquette of common sense
decrees it be replaced by When? Where? How old?
and Who will call the others?