Aubade

Pavement roars the thin dark to dawn, the softest
of dreads. In the brains’s dark the metal noise of work wanes, 

and I wince in the quiet as beltings and welts

shape themselves into jejune grey sunup, the slightest

of umbrage tracing the edges of verse wrung of lenity.

I uncork the amber and swill; my neck slumps in nod. 

To excise misbelief as headlights beam the length
of a bridge where below the stream is high,
the current swirling, bugs not yet buzzing the thicket.

The day begins in blur and racket, the whine of diesels,
the grunt of gears—a void of wrenches and pistons—
and I stare until the drizzle becomes rain, and the rain clicks.