rigmarole

The shadows reach towards tomorrow’s sunrise while the slowly sipping leaves take in the last of the lingering day. The sky climbing up the trees while the sun says its long goodbyes. I lean hard into the breathing, rasping and spitting and clearing my throat like I’m about to start making a speech. The animals laze around the yard, and the crows are calling each other home. People work their mouths and minds, running them at different speeds, racing around separate tracks. It works about as well as you’d think. 

It is high dudgeon season, the outraged how dare yous and the declaration of a very specific set of rights, false positives and last hills and the evils of the flag. The belief in belief itself seems to wag the dog of late, though the whole kingdom of man is built on foundations of similar sands. The world we inhabit mostly ghosts and thought experiments, culture always in it for itself. The earth proclaims the laws that are, while we scribble in the rule book and simper about the original meaning of all our barks and grunts. Bells and whistles while the barbed thistles silently declaim the lessons of the flesh. We can’t help it, we were late to the party, and we think we’re somewhere else.

A crow calls out its retreat, summoning its band to assemble unto the roost. A man and a boy ride their bikes against traffic across the street, the yard the disarray of weeds and the clamber of animals. An art song plays long and sharp, a piece of some other heart that left me long ago.  The evenings machinery shifts, sparrows flit beneath the eaves, the crow takes flight with kin in tow. All we are is unleavened labor, all we are is a roll of the dice. The neighborhood vibrates with pent up energy, ready for something wild and raw after all these days of self discipline and enforced denial. I miss you like I always do, constantly and without purpose. I miss you like I miss me too, saying goodbye each day, the rigmarole and the curtain calls and the tears of no tomorrow. Everything in the way we take our givens.