A Night In July (Love Poem) Poem by Doren Robbins

Alone with one lamp
I bite into the red pearl of a nectarine.
It’s been a year of lay-offs, impulsive
travels, and birth
of a daughter. I work
here all night in the garage
full of books, all night
with one lamp, with spiders
and moths, their sudden
unacknowledged deaths,
their births that are always hidden.
I work alongside of broken ironing boards,
boxes full of forgotten stuff, and a mirror
with three sides of the frame gone—
and how the remaining
part is connected
I do not know. The garage
is connected to the garden. I sense
the avocadoes ripening and the ring lines
growing inside the tree. A few of the late
leaves have started turning alongside of
the ripened fruit, outside of
my peculiar ripening, in here,
among the faded backs of the folding chairs,
and my notebooks with wire spirals coming undone.
I sit in here facing the medley of interiors I prefer,
unthreading myself along the way.