Mosaic | Mambo | The Silent Din | Love's Song

Flor de la Canela (The Cinnamon Flower)

All the Roses | In the Dark | Night tremens

Night Tremens

© Carl Hathwell

Plunging my car into the dark,
my headlights keeping count
of the gaps in the broken line,
I let my thoughts shift to a void,
a flickering, deathlike void,
and the night is a sweat-ticking void.

Then François Dourlat dropped out of nowhere,
hovering in the wind outside my windshield, staring in:
his ochre bang flying wildly,
his peau marbrée and contoured musculature,
his pencil moustache.
François, you look better than ever.

And he was nice, achingly nice, generous and forever smiling.
But he looked puzzled as he hovered there, a little hurt.
Why did we break up?
Who knows, men at the time just wandered off.
Oh, he’s disappeared!
We’ll never meet again.

Now Catherine came floating up.
Still quite the femme fatale:
cheveux en l’air,
the curve of her reclining hip,
that direct and delving blue look into my eyes,
summoning my soul to her use.

 She was French all right--more charm than is fair.
Sex meant nothing to her, she expected you to know this.
She never stayed with any man.
Still, when she wandered off I cried all night.
What’s new, Catherine?
Suddenly she vanished.

Good. It’s better to be alone.
The dark is soothing.
Yet the broken line brings memories
as it also carries them away,
unforeseen but indelible,
a tsunami gathering as you lie in the dark.