Abstention

orange juice and yogurt with two peeled kiwis for breakfast 
recalled to presence, a man oscillates between two vacant rooms,

each step slightly tilted by an injured knee, interludes 
of a gray sky through cusps of branches, some green is still present

on the lawns, but the shades are asymmetric
morning again, another Friday for a trip to the mosque, the fog is lifted, a man walks 

his dog, a sandy brown, not golden,  
an uglier variant of the shade. Dear dog. Dear 

human being. Eyes, lips, the upper one divided by two arcs, white strands within blackest hair,
the lips carry a stamp of ferocity in their reddish speckles.

Wind can no longer shake the trees if leaves are fully severed  
Rumi says, every rub points at where 

it needs polishing    again the noise of tires, like the entry
of a socket wrench into Valhalla. News 

from home, earthquake shudders Dhaka 4 
times in a week. The effect of time on a man 

is his overgrown nails. Here is a butcher
handling pieces with his own knife. These bare trees, 

hidden during summer, threatening to the eyes, now insinuate a wound 
within. A piece of blue horizontally splits the gray clouds. Below, half 

hidden across a copse of trees, stand muted houses, except 
a yellow cottage, guarded beneath a red maple still full of leaves 

from where a soccer field stretched all the way to this rusty fence, preoccupies 
a pedestrian. I do not know how to act out love.  

Note: “A Placebo” from Hello, the Roses by Mei-mei Berssenbrugge contains the line 
“We call change in a person the effect of time”