She didn’t want to go to work that day.
That is, more so than other days. She went
of course. She couldn’t figure out a way
to use an absence code for “discontent.”

She couldn’t tell a lie, she never could,
so how could she legitimize her need
to sit alone and watch the neighborhood
awaken through her window, and to read

the street signs she could see from where she sat,
which she had known for years but never seen
as text before, or to finally notice that
the swale out in the median was green

with growth from last week’s rain, or how the crows
conferring on the wires above the street
seemed calm and thoughtful in their dawn repose,
or how the neighbor’s cat could not compete

with the tiniest wren, darting around
the princess tree before it flew away,
or how the rising symphony of sound
incantated the coming of a day.