Dark morning, above, your single star pulses white fire. I squint at the garage roofs for signs of first frost. There's a distant motor, a train engine, a hum, pillows on iron wheels, a lover's long careful whisper, while the street light casts the shadows of a tree against the white siding of the vacant house across the alley like deep feathers as still as a frozen river.
At the front of a long line I found a criminal who was getting away, beat him in the head, and then handed my club over to reinforcements, went outside for some air, and woke from the dream alone.
Now the sky's shoulder, fresh and blue, has turned over between the star and I. And a sparrow winks out loud, bouncing from branch to branch behind the cedar's heavy green coat. And still that distant motor, that train engine, the lover's careful whisper windless hums.
Ahead of the sun I snuck into November 2nd, the day after the Day of the Dead, where all day my thoughts had been pulled back behind my lips into frozen woods remembering myself hunting with the rifle of a man who had since died; and where, by chance, before a Mexican shrine, I found a bullet that would have fit, but the primer had been knocked-out, disarmed, empty brass safe enough to be thrown against the ground without going off.
Now the sun runs golden sideways into all that was dark and has eaten the first frost from the roofs. And the damp shapes disappear while clouds pull in over Detroit to bury the brief rising river of light. Rest falling leaves and leave the amber stain and outline of your reach on the concrete, where we walk, like the white blood of snowflakes that will soon melt against warm windows.
fontella
