compass

The mocking bird makes its last complaint along the bitter dregs of the day. It will not wait for the sky to tell it that final confession blue. It can not pause for the seamless dismantling of the smoke. To fly is to fly, to burn is to burn. Everything else is only echos in the green limbs. The reach of want, the stretch towards the tense of the sun.

You are that mystery of flight, pacing the wire above all useful doubt. You are the smell of coconut and sunburn, the scent of high holiday amidst the salt and sand. Dusk clings to your horizon, slip-thin and tight about your hips. Out in the long shadows I watch your remission. In the long pause towards midnight you are all the shine I see.

But this is not the kingdom of poetry, that vetting the prettiest mistakes by light and tongue. The season is grass fires and sudden storms, the streets flecked with dreamers and the under-employed. There is no grace in the feel of empty hands, the grasp of the distance between word and deed. You are farther still than any star, my latest favor and furthest conceit. The night arrives, the doors are closed. Windows open to any breath or bright.