onto the inevitable

If tomorrow’s coming, I sure can’t see it from where I sit and smoke. The setting sun tangled in the shrubbery as it goes all westward and wagons ho, the day does its little dance. Dogs bark and crows call, and the beating of helicopter blades slips between the fence boards and each sentence. The yard is all canines, cats, and deadfall, winter mud and California sun. A wind slips in, more west than northerly, and it sets a small chill upon my shoulders. For now, the only future I see involves maybe putting on a hoodie if this wind really means it. Eternity hasn’t made it out here yet.

The sun sets slow, and I watch it, just in case it tries something funny. I stare at sky and treetop, watching what the wind stars to swaying. Some plug church, some clipped idiom, and yet the west is somehow always you. Your old tricks and the tricks of my mind, the dusk engulfs and the counter keeps turning over. All this wishing on words and special teams, the night comes slow, bone blue horizon and the pounding hours’ cold bite. All alone despite the directions.

The body knows it’s over before the spirit gets the gist. The mind alone won’t know, the wheel drawing all the water that it’s got. The cold sits in my lap, playing with my beard, kissing at my face and fingers. I stare in your direction despite its lack of your inhabitance, as you weave the world anew, and I bear this flame. I shiver and dwindle as the night presses on, cold concessions and failings on repeat. A receding memory of a world that never was, mumbling its litany while you get to the job at hand.