dandelion

The moon was almost worth it. The day was almost kind. The sunshine followed me back inside, the warmth of the day lingering by the door, sitting a spell on the front porch. The music plays, the smoke cavorts, ashes curl up in my lap. The night and the street make their reports through the screen door, the whole world awake to the spring with busy hands restrained in their pockets. Engines rev and voices raise, all the stunt work and the stotting, birds and bees and the budding trees. Though old, feeble, and rapidly falling apart I feel it too. The big bright moon and the warm dark night aren’t fooling.

I swallow a mouthful of tepid coffee, take a beat before I take a smoke. The moment is a muddle, ache and break and prophecy, the body in its habitual dismay. Squaring off with the exchange rate, counting down the clock with the gravitas of the gaze, every display case empty and covered in dust. My policy is a qualified let live. I have a wasp nest by my gas cap. I let the yard run wild. I rest my bones on a charity chair and ottoman, the moon dragging me by the heels. A childhood song, a dandelion, a wish unspoken. 

It’s 10:30 on a Saturday night. I’m 54 years old. The world around me grows frayed and tattered even as my grasp grows weaker, the blows come harder even as my strength fades. Waning hard as the moon becomes, albedo radiant down through skin and bone, a color of breathed out blood. Staring clean through ceilings and walls, encumbering every surface with this laden gaze, the still and the slow as the world boils away. It is the moment in lone blossom and lucky clover, the staggered planets and the steady constellations. The smoke always showing for the fire, the beauty all scattered to the wind. What else is this life for but the living? The turn towards the burning, every breath a wish.