calculate

The day has gone from greens and golds to greens and grays, the rain retorts and the get away crows abound. The dark clouds grow darker as the sunset sets in, the clasp of shadows and the grasp of artificial light. The rumors trip from room to room until they idle by the door or slip in your windows, the only words they honor the ones that will take your place. It’s the lessons that they tally, it’s the numbers that they take, your flesh and bones and beating heart sums to calculate. The storm is held is the bowl of sky, spilling down upon our intransigent dreams. The storm reaches down, spilling blessings and rattling roofs. 

Know the rain by its gatherings, know the pieces by their placement. The tracks come and go, claw marks in the dust, footpads in the mud. The gray water pooling beneath a rubble pile cairn of brick and concrete and rusty rebar, the rain water turning a wheelbarrow into a birdbath, three crows flying north in the night. The cold air slowly holding hands, finger by finger, the icy ache ringing from wrists on out. The words accumulate as the night seals like a promised kiss. Who knows what sleepers it may awaken?

I am still before the immensity of the rising night. I am bathed in wan electric light, shoving small shadows through my mass. The bright of writing on this ersatz page, the whiteness spent luminesce to absorb the illusion of ink I partner with in this perception, blinds as it reveals. Garage doors clack and rumble, trash cans bounce up curb and driveway, taillights shine and signal as travelers cease their daily travails. I abide the ritual, food for any appetite that will have me. I endure the ritual, words wasted through and through. There’s just no being me, there’s just no knowing you. Just the stirring of the sleepers, the dogs going off down the block. Just the settling of wagers and the falling of the rain.