The moon at least can look at a lake without the slightest
self-pitying refraction. Unlike the conscious
person who, walking the shore, notes the zero is brightest
when growing nearer. He carries the noxious,
not in his pocket, but in those cells he's built of
and the threads which bind them, the guilt of
awareness, the floating zero of which he's the latest
example. His gut distended from Thanksgiving dinner
and conversations with strangers to whom he's related,
he sought the shoreline to walk himself thinner:
committed to healthy living though quite often sated,
he'd like to howl at the moon, but inhibited,
contents himself with the thought he'd exhibited
remarkable constraint with his family's noisiest whiner.

And now there's the moon and himself and the lake
and the moon's faint pull and the pain which of late
multiplies zero in attention-getting pulses
just behind his ribs, which he ignores but knows is
no Thanksgiving guest arriving just after
the table is cleared with belly-filled laughter,
but the stranger he fears; the rilled surface he'll break.