21
Poem
by Philip Miller
At 4am they came. Each side of me a son,
white in the nightlight, curled like new lungs.
One warm, sweaty skin and matted hair,
and the other kicking, a snoring dog chasing a hare.
Unsleeping the light rose and we three lay like saints
in the nave, a teddy bear for a sword and a blanket
for stone, with our blood in time like waves
pulled by the same moon, naked and hot and frank.
One woke with a smile remembering a dream,
the other moaned for another day to be endured.
At the crumby table they laughed and argued over the toast.
I pulled at my suit in its plastic sheath, like a body inside a ghost.