Mercury in Retrograde

The darkest winter nights tend to tilt 

what little moonlight they have left to give.

Somebody at the door.

Ignore, ignore--

you are fading away;

the shade steals you into 

something resembling sleep.

You are a fish. And on this side

of the surface, everything runs

in reverse. The rules of the game:

1. Either flail your arms

or don’t move at all.

2. Get drunk on chamomile steam.

3. Bring a ladder. We’ll take it

up lunar streams 

from our underwater rowboats.

It all happens very suddenly.

There’s a line 

and a hook and you’re being

reeled from the dark waters

down to the ocean floor,

and the other fish become shadow puppets,

and you remember when you were five

and everything seemed stranger

than it does now, and there was a girl

with a paper fortune teller on a playground

who made you blush and showed you

a toy knife, and everything inside you sank.

You have one job. 

Find the flashlight

you lost that day 

and salvage it from below. 

For there is nothing in this world

that cannot be undone in sleep.

There is a banging at the door

and you awake empty-handed.

The archangel Virgil thrusts the door open,

grabs you by the wrist and points your finger

past the moon to a moving star

with your initials written on it

and for a moment or

perhaps an eternity, 

it stops,

and then appears to spin backward.