Tuesday

Closed-mouthed, and what of it on a week day?
What’s to be gained, the discomfort that comes from baring teeth
or letting a tongue hang out wildly which makes the locals laugh
and the less familiar turn their heads away in utter disgust,
the saliva and what I’ve been chewing falling this way and that?
There’s never much to say that can’t be imagined as worse.
Frinstance, it’s hardly Tuesday already,
the weekend, thank God, both distant memory and faraway fear
when I’m expected to comply with my contract
and emit at least one barbaric yawp
over the roofs of the world,
the children called to attention,
their grown-ups flinch but are hardly put in mind of what it’s like
wandering town to town, going this way and that.
For them and me, it’s the sweet ennui of having come from some place
and arriving at another. Though some might call it settling —
others unsettling — it’s a modest place, this home.