The old merled dog wakes us at 0330. The plot against sleep continues through the winter. The winter is full of plots, real and imagined and at this early hour I can’t tell if it’s the one against my wife sleeping, the one against me sleeping, or the one in which the dogs crawl under the porch to take a shit. I may have to take up midnight fishing just to sleep properly again. The plots exchange themselves out of convenience, because now I’m certain the dog’s plot all along was to get me down to the basement. She knows I will give up and come down here, coffee and apple and tobacco and words. 

In my head, the plot unfolds in which I question why I bother getting out of bed, why the tired machine persists. The usefulness of a man is defined by the amount of money for which he exchanges his time between birth and death. These mornings of coffee and apple and tobacco and words I try to keep in mind that practice and faith in the mystical mechanics of the universe are enough. Ply the old ways. Fill the head with notions, jigger, then empty. Every line and phrase is a word cocktail, the output of a machine made for that purpose. The old merled dog knows nothing of this. Only that something drives her, too.

no one will know I ever arrived
until I’m gone
kicked along by some other current
a pebble 
gradually worn down
into bone dust