Buckets of Light

Nick rises at six.We drink the same bitter coffee.He is going to the urologist,but first to the factorywhere they will forge rocket partsfrom nickel alloy,metal that keeps its shape,refuses to burn or crackwhen heat and pressuretry to unmake it.

The nickels in our pocketsare mostly copper,seventy-five parts base metalto twenty-five of the harder name.When he was small I called himNick Nick Nick and Nickel,as if the sound itselfcould plate him against harm.

He leaves.

All day I gather light:crowd weatherproof solar lampsinto buckets of sand,hoard the sun’s thin currencyagainst the dark that always comes.

I have never sat in that waiting room.He does not seem afraid.I am afraid in the gut,where the body’s oldest weather gathers.

We live in the last world,or the only one we know.He is young, still strong, still handsome.I am the old man, thinning,collecting daylight in plastic bucketsfor a night that has not yet arrived.

And still the alloy holdsuntil the pressure finds the seamwe never named.