What does it mean

What does it mean to sit silent,
Waiting up with the moon all night,
Expecting something,
Expecting some sound, some signal, some sign?
And get nothing.
Just a blank, embarrassed absence.
An emptiness like an ellipse.
A closed curve vacant as a vacuum
With an anemic moon dimly fading.
And when morning rises
Pale and nauseous,
Sickening as the ass end of a nightmare,
Even the birdsong
And dogs barking
And kids at the bus stop
Aren't enough to make it normal.
When morning drops
Like a corpse onto the lawn,
While the children stand there
Staring, dumb as relics
In the dawn,
You realize
It's over....

I Turned My Back

I turned my back and went.
But instead of going eyeless
I looked
And saw furniture flying from the roof.
Windows, lintels, doorways & eaves,
Tatters of time-dusted draperies fluttering.
A woman in burgundy bustle
Holding a little girl by the hand;
Both suddenly gone into the ground.
A man in frock coat
Powdered the same burgundy
Waved. Smiling.
Then he, too, turned
Into a doorway.
And was gone.
Lattice. Ice on the asphalt. Ivy.
Dim details.
Random fragments fixed from dreaming;
When initially
The whole thing
Was so certain.