A skylight guides the sun across a solitary houseplant,
Sitting high, leaves perched,
For another filtered afternoon.

Her pale, bony hands,
Long fingers fidgeting, waiting,
Don’t notice how they play in the light.
.
Outside, a cold, dry wind whirls up dust,
Roadside greetings on the edge of town.

Across the street, dry leaves
Scattered in crackling waves
Erase any hope summer might linger here.
.
A couple trails the sidewalk,
Clutching bags, heads down,
Maybe mustering the courage,
thinking they can catch sail
And pass over the ridge
One at a time.
.
Away from the leaves,
behind the shriveled mass of a car
Unmoving for months,
A dog lies in the dirt.
.
Sitting along the storefront, the cheapsters,
Puppeteers of badness, now wilting and fading,
Propped up briefly by a cigarette passed amongst them,
Go on thinking the game is still on,
Though their eyes are hollow,
Echoing the wind.
.
Soon the skylight will recount her life,
Moving across the far wall,
Framed in awkward moments,
That never really happened that way.
A draping cobweb catches the light
Almost like it could connect the story.
Dust floats and sparkles,
Airy reflections of illumed times.

That brief light.
.
Her fingers set onto the dishes now
Hot soapy water,
Cold sunshine pouring through a kitchen window,
A plate, a bowl, dinner, breakfast and snack
All passing through shiny, wet fingers,

Those fingers,
Still deft in their movement,
Still alive with song, and the stories
Her gesturing hands could tell.
.

October afternoon:

The fate of a single alder leaf

Drifting down,

might have been sealed

Long before the tree.

.

Now

Is less about early afternoon breezes.

More about lingering mornings,

Not yet ripe and flavored

With neatly packaged memories of summer.

.

This leaf floats through air

not yet lacquered in winter,

But stained with the patina of a mid-day sun

That hides swimming holes and watermelons.

.

Still,

This is time for one more earful of cricket song,

frog speak,

Stinging mosquito bite.

.

Where the leaf lands,

tastes of dust in cool woods.

.

Creeks move in tiny whispers here,

If they haven’t gone forgotten.

.

The biggest surprise of them all,

Rows of sad houses

Lining rusty streets.

.

Where rain fails hopeful gardens

Again and again.

Every corner, trails of thigh deep woe

Stacks of mailboxes

Sheltering misery

From the grind of days

Mixed in hazy, medusa skies.

.

Each door playing the same story

Neighbors, but a chapter apart.

Street by street,

The same book written again and again,

Nail by nail.
.
A fading bumper sticker

Plays bold music,

Almost in hormony

With a tuneless flute,

From behind drawn curtains

And a window left open.

Late afternoon, University

Where the sun catches bleachers

Casting time across the tiniest slice of playing field.

A staccato “Hup! Hup!”

“Hup!” Of a frisbee scrimmage.

.

“Here!”

.

The hum of a campus in early summer,

Where the players’ cries, hoots and woots

Tick away a timeless place between the

Hourly bell toll.

.

On the seventh lap around the rubber track,

That echoing bell marks religion

Just in case we missed it.

.

A light breeze ruffles tree tops above the stadium

While down here, all is still

Just foot steps, slap of hand on frisbee,

sound of breeze in this still field,

Like a reminder of a world out there.

.

“No! No! Here!”

.

An easy time filled with gentle ripples

You know, the kind that form when

Memories, place, sound and light

Move together.

.

The kind that pull up poems

From that time I sat with her at the beach

And gently reached my arm out to hold her.

From then on, the distance between us grew.

It was the last time we felt the wind together.

.

Now,

Summer,

Rolling in enamel bliss

That will not wear off over a

sky shadowed, cast in vapor

Illumed by the fading light of an afternoon:

Like when Autumn became Spring

for just one day.

.

That was what we remembered

When we didn’t know that this kind of day

Not the faintest idea,

That today could be the richest of them all.

.

Maybe because it was the quietest.

Like I said:

Late afternoon summer.

The bell tolling another hour

Like some silly notion

That time might be slipping by.

“Ha!”

 

Her stories might go unheard over the sparkle in her eyes,

The sweeping gestures of her unfolding arms,

Or even the way she glances down

As if to gather another bit of grace.

.

The tale could be any old thing,

Mustered up from random memories,

Told in the plainest of ways.

.

But in her words;

Words that seem to catch the first morning sun,

Those rays that fall across the wooden table,

Simple, soft illuminations

Like a summer afternoon yawn,

Slipping into the slumberous, the sublime.

.

Her stories are of all things:

Big and small,

Near and far,

Hoped for and gotten.

.

Or maybe the words speak nothing,

While they bring life to everything around.

Late at night the wind finally stirs,

Raising tree branches to the window,

And against the lights of town,

Sends shadows dancing across the wall.

Friday night, like the dust settling,

Where the creak of the barroom door,

Opens to a home of ice cubes,

Laying around, melting,

Collecting the heat of the day.

.

The whiskey might be poured

Mixed with the yawn of summer,

Sprinkled with laughter that tests

The little scratches along the bar.

.

Sunset reaches out like a voice

Tapping at the one tiny window,

Peering in the creaking barroom door

With a crooked welcome mat,

Worn, and tired with lifetimes of possibilities

that will languish on that last light.

.

Then the crickets sing,

Like jukeboxes across the sagebrush flats,

As the last working street light,

The life of Main Street, goes dim.

.

That’s when the fightwater gets poured.

And the doors fly open, letting loose

A roar across the desert,

Spewing the sad love songs,

They hoped would be sung together.

.

Not long after,

The last ice cube clinks silently

Along the half empty glass,

Calling for more. While the buzz

of an old street light struggles to life,

and a lone cricket remembers the words.