obvious stars

Grapes hang still from neglected vines, though the summer is ripe and the hour late. Birds busy themselves from sky to stem, clinging to the blue before appearing amid the green, slips and flickers that range from drab to gaudy. Words and written without care or caution, dull and treacherous upon the tongue. The flavor of dry, those mutterings of dust. The steady campaign of indistinction winnowing away at the senses getting lost.  A mark here, an absence there. The slow and leaden onslaught of the lonesome night.

It feels a little like the hour of your arrival, glowing in the twilight as though lit from within. The special sentience granted thought and flesh when doused in light, memory worn in the open as a second skin. That vast and liquid lingering of touch and want aligned. The warm reckless day both young and ancient, the eloquence of an infants gaze, hinting of further distance and lives lived out. That magic of meeting you casting whole threads of happenstance as precious evidence, the familiar stranger I will always know.

The skies empty out their aviaries. Bird descend to feed in flock and feather. I know them in color and in song, but most of their lives are a mystery. Why the abrupt finches here, and the haughty humming bird there? Which company will the stoic woodpecker keep? Their secrets kept better than the language of creation. All the smoke and mirrors, and still this lost cadence.  All the gathered certainties and still we serve a greater lapse.  Our heads are splitting, our hearts choke on shadows. We serve out each sentence beneath a gleaning of obvious stars. Clumsy and telegraphed, we mumble away our caution to the cavernous night.