Poem: Window

I signed up for a writing workshop associated with the medical school. It is a three-session evening class with 15 writers, all members of the Stanford medical community. Somehow it fit in my call schedule and I am very excited about this. We focused on creating new work. Here is one of those poems.

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Window

Each morning, I wake to a new window.
Today it is the window of an officer's glasses
eyes magnified, serpent-like
in an expression encountering halitosis alighting
that breath of rum and vodka,
and the next window is the torch:
look at my nose, the prodding voice commands
and I dodge into the next room
the images swim up, portals of access and descent
until another window consumes, a window
with a blackberry vine, a meander across
the splintered barn, my shoulders aching
from the beat and welt of days.

You are too serious, I tell the bars
and like you, their insistence is silent.
Oh, the windows say the same thing every day
shelter among shelter, and believe me,
if I could climb through, I would have long ago.