May 5th

A fifth of May would be almost a week, not a day.
A fifth of a family is to be part of five lives, not fewer

than one. Alone, I’ve felt myself seeping out to the night,
not unpleasantly, and becoming less than myself

while more of the world, some animal, some star,
some puddle in a wheel rutted driveway seeping in

to the earth like a feeling absorbed by a body
and turned into a thought, an ache, a name.

A number that remembers isn’t doing its job,
only a fifth, which is fine, more like fingers

interlacing or opening like a flower in May
till the whole of us can’t be located