Forced Evolution

The bus is late again
and sleep's been short

a tooth on the tongue 
sharpened,

but hi, the weather x,
you say, and yes

to chocolate from
a stranger -

too sweet fluttering
the heart with its

refined sugar, 

same how caught
on a train track

it raced and emptied
of self, knowing

how sleep snatches 
in the long night

and never wakes,
but arrives 

repeatedly into being
like every day since

as if an eddy on a wave
could change course.

So you let the bus 
leave, made cold 

and troubled 

like a cobra poised
above its own center

on thresholds of violence
and mercy, and find instead

the warmth of a sunny rock

to count the petals 
on clovers

in the weedy grass

could a crown of stems 
beyond the ordinary
be made -

a root of self

tethered to its own
shaping - would this

woken dream, depart.