Wednesday Morning, End Of September Poem by Bernard Quest

Waking after fly-blown sleep and wanting
Nothing so much as to drown, I detour
Across town the long way by the lake.
Yet I'm somehow cleansed and lifted by
That grim expanse of slate-blue lizard tongue
Which licks against the neatly pointed walls.
Oily breathed, with snorts and whinnies
Corralled commuters head to work.

The still damp grass is tracked to where we sat
Under the tulip tree you said
Was your mother's favourite kind.
This family trivia was,
Somehow, a small revelation
As are these leaves, now tobacco browned
In patches.
My fingers trace dry rivulets of cork
Wrapped around the slender cantaloupe trunk.

From the pop-up picture-book school, roofers
voices drift smoke-like in the morning air
(too early still for excited children) .
A practiced underarm pitches a tile
Directly upwards. Joy pricks me.
This neither one thing nor the other,
Balanced still and neutral. A hand
Reaches from the scaffold. Catch me.