dewpoint

Undo the works of metal and of aggregation begun somewhere behind the eyes of time, undo the acts of cowardice and of the kind that line the nests and the alcoves. Forget all the words tangled in the boughs, the cradle always about to be bound to fall. The lay of the breed and of the pasture where it grazes, the stars we still wish on falling. Here lies the done and the doing, the dead and their cohorts swaddled in earth and root. Here lies the seed before it ever was planted, the cell before it divided again and again. The soil soaked in ancestors before there was a world to inherit, the souls stalking the land before there ever was a house to haunt.

Forget it all, the gray streets and the shadow swept eaves. Forget the beat of the squalling cat and the crafty raccoon. The day presses up upon us, dry eyed and empty handed. The day blows us heartless kisses, its breath diamonds tucked between sleepy blades of grass. Cloud wisps and winged horses tangled in the skyward reach of leaf and limb. Branches spread like lightning, the clades of clan and family written green and brown against the diminishing black of the ebbing night. The atmosphere blesses everything equally, holiness all neglect and anonymity.

That crown sprays its wealth from the skittering silhouettes of the east, the brown out hills and lowing herds. The streetlight perpetuity, gaudy and failing block by block. Tire hiss and engine growl of the first commuters and last of the corner crawl, the check day prowl about to collide with a three-day weekend. The morning papers flat behind glass or beset by ants in the drive or smudging up morning fingers beneath the bright forever fluorescence of some 24 hour Gas N Gulp. Every rumor true as the dogs defend their borders, and the stars go out in defiant glee, here where it all wound up.