At New Year

Of all the places I’ve woken up, this one feels like a dream. Still Seville. Alamillo Park. A black-and-white-spotted cat seeks contact but avoids people. The grass. I lie down flat as if I’m fainting myself awake. The sun fills me from the inside. The book lies half-read, recovering. From the bushes, a horde of birds. They imitate rainforest and crickets: scratching, hatching, chattering an endless gossip that might matter. Spanish human voices from families on rental bikes. They roll through the green tunnel into path. Close, yet gone. My own children on an expedition in other clearings. Talking squirrelishly about this and mostly that, and then back to this again—beyond my event horizon. Instead: distant sirens, alternating with the muffled groan of traffic. Over there, past the olive grove, the bridge can be glimpsed. The resting harp whose load-bearing strength is said to be doubtful. One day the strings will snap and fling the roadway into the universe. But now, more here here: someone is rinsing off their fireworks. Someone else is using up their firecrackers. Tentative crackles and the roar of war. It’s New Year’s Eve in the city without seasons. The birds keep chattering. The brain is quiet.