traveling across five time zones
six hours of first loss then gain
a quarter turn of a 24 hour day
brings us up against diurnal pulse

of biorhythmic alertness and sleep
this up and down lost in the old norm
in your face through the Earth’s turn
the phototropic effect out of phase

with our bodies sympatico routine
waking in middle night and asleep
just when we should be most awake
everything new in night now gone day

 

James Van Looy has been a fixture in Boston’s poetry venues since the 1970s. He is a member of Cosmic Spelunker Theater and has run poetry workshops for Boston area homeless people at Pine Street Inn and St. Francis House since 1992. Van Looy leads the Labyrinth Creative Movement Workshop, which his Labyrinth titled poems are based on. His work appears weekly in Oddball Magazine.