Waking at 3 a.m.

by Steve Luria Ablon

I have to pee even though I don’t.
I place my arms across my chest

like the Buddha, to hold myself here.
This is how Stinestsky will arrange

me in the coffin. I think I feel like dying,
scratch the sheet, digging, digging, helpless,

get up out of this bed, hear the rumble
of a landslide, stumble, run to high ground,

hold trees being uprooted, mud, dirt, roots,
boulders coming to submerge me,

pee and shake the earth off.
I don’t see death, just white light,

colloidal granite grooves of sandstone,
outside consciousness, blood basted

in my hair. It will be one step too far
into the canyons kaleidoscopic.