Diurnal

Diurnal

When she said, “I’m perishing,”
a detached voice, black, from
the back seat of a small car,
I knew, I think, she meant
she was past hungry, which is to say
Very Hungry, not past at all
But more deeply Into,
and I thought, I know, that
Every traveler, all of us
scratching across this land
in darkness could would shall
at any moment slip from
a few syllables into pure night.
Well, that’s hunger:
the thing that returns each day
before you let go and just
get it all.