Drinking Alone

Sitting in my car
in the employee lot at work, five am
under one of two tall lights
listening to A Ghost Is Born
                    My car alone
tucked in next to a squarely hedged viburnum

Rain spits and
splatters shadows
cast from my windshield
A growing pattern of stains
on my hands and clothes
spreading all in one direction
down my body
toward the bottle between my legs

It’s all leading somewhere
                    these blemishes, this growing pox of shadows
this image I notice and of course
the allusion as well
But noticing these devices
does nothing, yet, as I sit drinking
in my car
in the hours before work
in the rain, alone
in this empty lot