DOWN AT THE COUNT OF TEN

My favorite coffee mug from the dish rack,
six a.m., is so solstice-cold
a corner man could use it as an End-Swell
on his blind fighter, Mister McGoo, looking like
he’s whispered nectarean hive-jive into the ear
of a yellow jacket nest. Is it obvious
I’ve watched too much inane TV? Can you
tell I stayed awake until two
awestruck by the documentary
footage of Muhammad Ali—stayed up late
mostly to stoke the fire, mostly
to save on propane, mostly to make sure
December twenty-first did not stick
around one stopwatched round longer
than its allotted time, time
easily freezing in these windchills
with their eighty-below reach, weighing in
as this year’s pound-for-pound baddest
of the heavyweight bad.
                                    Ten days and counting
ticks to victory—Ali poised
buoyant against the ropes, the greatest
premiere of ring wizardry
displayed ever in the coliseum of sweet science
that hot morning in Zaire, fierce
George Foreman punching himself out,
Ali absorbing a pummeling so sinful
no unholy man could stand up to it
on this or any other gravity-riddled planet
a-spin.
           Nineteen hundred and ninety-eight is
fighting for wind, its jaws unhinged,
its legs like vermicelli, no sauce
left to its wicked jab, no al dente in its
uppercut or garlic in its hook, no brisk
boil of overhand rights. I sandbag the braggart,
bide my time and brace my left foot
for the parting of the wave. I temper
every day’s doom with a palooka poem
animated in my head, bruised in its cocoon
of red leather. My plan is everlasting. Dance,
as composed as winged eighth notes
sailing out of the cartoon blue
right through the tsunami’s wall, land
my solid one-two-three-four
combination and then, bowing to love, tower
above the canvas aftermath—Jackson Pollock,
caught in a still-shot, lifting
his brush dripping into another fractious abstract
year’s last long stroke.