Late night in the North,
cat asleep by my feet,
a bag of heated round rice
across my ski-strained groins,
I'm allowed
by the world
and my circumstances
to read Jack Kerouac's Desolation Angels
or perhaps poems by Rumi;
the smell of the horses still on my hands

Everything up to now
has put me here;
I'm lucky,
I really can't complain,
so I stay awake
under the heavy quilt
on The Ship Of Dreams
way into this mid-February night,
going for Kerouac,
time handling the situation really well
as I sharpen my pencil
and my senses

I don't know what I'd do
without me