9am
is wrapped in commuter cold
hunkering into bus seats
or nursing cars through bowels
of constipated traffic.
9am is the cruellest hour.
See the people made beige
pushing through scarfed
awakening, the workday’s
reckoning, swapping
presence for credit.
The swaddled brutality
of 9am, the coffee clutched,
the earbuds distracting
with a different rhythm.
Stomachs grumble cereal,
phones bring news
of elsewhere, but here
and now is the relentless
decanting of the day
through the funnel of 9am.
This is the vampire hour,
not dusk. The light husk
of possibility drifts,
quite drained, no later than
9.10.
P.S. Cottier
