Eyes Closed for Remodeling

Writing without my glasses on,

I feel slightly drunk, the way

I felt last night sitting under redwoods

with Norwegian flags tacked to them

at an Italian restaurant with your family.

Not because we drank—which we don’t

with your parents around—but because

it was a night of extremes: the frigid air,

butane torches, tree branches too high to even

dream of climbing, and now I realize

it’s not like that at all, because this

is a mushy softening with no hard angles,

no high places.  I must be thinking of the ride home,

which the garlic mushrooms smoothed

into one long curve of rain and stars. 

Yes, I must be thinking

of that time when I was hardly thinking,

hardly awake, like my fingers now,

skidding across the keys to form words

I won’t remember in the morning.