24 Hours

On Venus, a day equates
to one hundred sixteen
and three quarters of our own

sunrise to sunrise,
where a world
is conceived: at the threshold

your hand moves forward
to pull up the blinds,
the dust motes hang

without intention of settling —
an orchid waits expectant
for the light
but your hand is still yet

to reach up
but the dust will never fall,
except when you turn away or sleep

or find a friend in a dream
has not only a day but a decade
gone by like rain at dawn

you are not sure what you will find
in the mirror —
a night is long when the drawers
are full and the pages are blank

soon the church bells chime
from down the street
the way each Sunday blinks back fear
and blinks again so that

next week appears
fresh as de ja vu
as you open the door to look at the sky —
looks the same as thirty-two

years ago when you were born,
when you got here from
someplace else,

where a day
knows no real end
and has been forever beginning