I, slow listener, sat while her poisoned future gathered like a tightened fist, and watched him slip for that moment through her fingers, out windows where the world was green. He read the cryptic scrawl of clouds, spoke languages of wind and in them sang the mysteries of all that moves. Finished, she rose to take my hand. And in her grip I sensed a studied crush of bones, fractured wings, stifled roll of other drums. If this house should bum, gentle sonnets might lift, luminant and clear, to touch the moon And free accents of these verses arc and fall like random embers against black horizon.
Some conflict arises tonight about either travel or a family concern.
Spent afternoon through a grime-splattered windshield blurred the measured shadow of this quiet man, intent toward home in January's growing dark. The sudden blow stained ice, left private crusts from a lunch sack strewn over the curb, the elastic whine of ambulance stretched into distance. Evening sparrows gather one - by one with dated invitations for crumbs of this simple tragedy. And from the comer of these intersecting lines, morning will rise, black through a starless east.