almost

The afternoon falls without a filter, restless wind and mottled sun, summer warm and weekend wise. The squirrels making their last rounds, the scolding of the scrub jay, the dead sparrow laid out beneath the stars. Sore in all these aches and motions, the ghosts of lost loves and spurned poems sting and swarm, this carcass cranking out dull words and wheezing breaths. This ego draped across the desperate landscape, sun and shadow and drowsing pets. Hours until dusk and the rising of the full on moon. Almost at the shifted statistics. Almost at the occluded hue. 

The day drawls by, reaching shadows and the glare of the sinking sun. The west all aglow and the wind messing around, I squint and sneeze, allergy afflicted and all at once beset. Another hole in this faithless vessel. Another worth to miss in measure. The music seeps while the engines blare, the mortal meat seething in ache and bleak chemistry, the way the shadow eclipses the reach. The years starved of laurels and kisses, the days feeding on dreams. The way you say you wished it could be.

It’s the sort of light that makes me wish for a knack for pictures. It’s the sort of light that says soon the scene will change. The stretch of sunlight through the pine needles, the heaped up shadows pushing hard across the horizon. The time that sidles soft and slow before us gone before you blink. Almost another year all but empty. The fecund moon both claim and call, this festive self another mark made in the dirt. All flags unfurled and blessings yet and wonders still to come. Almost the night, another bellyful of need.