the first

The drop comes and it’s hard to count the damage. The first of another unwanted month or half a moon plunked right down in the middle of it, another shift to the system where the words already quit working. A smile bent with the wince of bad teeth, the day given over to the giddy liars and their wide spread lies. The sky is cold and blue, a waste of fervent illumination. The day is bright and careless, a song not worth all the singing.

The cold bites the bones, even on a day so mild and bright. The gray muzzle not a lie for once, my body in a hurry playing catch up with the grave. Each day back bowed beneath the weight of waking, before each breath a coughing fit to clear the causeway. The categories just write themselves as I move from fool to coot. Something in my angles leaving me always a little askew to the heft and hew of the days latest techniques. Something in my mettle always getting me tuned up at the forge. The old was waiting for me all along.

All the songbirds improvise as the dogs work their bones, the day lit bright and pitched wide and outside. The sky makes its mirrors where it finds them, mud puddles and water bowls, windows, cars, and oil. The light gets in everything, strewn among the tree limbs, dripping off the eaves. All these orbits and rotations racked up in pictures and instruments, the dance done by the numbers, the scenery painted by the book. The black coffee swallowed before it cools. The numbers set again to one.