last scene

[[ Roughly based on a local girl who disappeared forever walking home alone from a night out. There is security video of her walking down the seaside promenade in the very early light just before she vanished. ]]

last seen walking 

home from Friday

home from anger

phone running down

barefoot sidewalk

swinging her shoes

within the sound of 

waves coming down

coming home late like that

barefoot and wobbling

you will be the talk of the town

almost morning 

bathing in strange light

almost daylight

bathing in almost day

what is the color 

of this time? 

this blue hour? 

this golden hour?

stepping through the singing of first birds

stepping through echoes on empty streets

stepping through air, through morning dew, 

wet street lamps, 

wet windows, 

wet shining cars,

stepping through air, through morning dew, 

like nothing could ever

Attenborough's Day Off

[[ A description of a real morning but with the observer transformed from a groggy parent eating toast into a bit of a voyeuristic, lecherous naturalist. ]]

Even the cat conspires,

the cat and Captain Underpants,

to douse my dream,

so I sit up, Nosferatu

on a hinge. Sunday morning

early, when a decent man 

would sleep, is full of sound.

Outside the open window

long bare legs are

flexing as she sways,  

her auburn hair flows down 

her back in early sun, 

her head is tilted to his, 

her eyes are in his eyes,

their tongues are tasting 

one last clinking beer.

They have so much to say 

but cannot keep their mouths 

apart for Jesus going on an hour, 

and her peculiar rocking on 

her long bare legs as if 

she sways to unheard music 

or as if -- they look around, 

he finds an opening in the 

wire fence around the lot 

behind them and she crouches

through alone.

He stands and smokes and looks 

the other way while she 

wades through tall grass and yarrow,

indigenous to these parts, 

to squat and disappear and

bare her bountiful cheeks

to all the creatures of the field, 

then reemerges.

They toss their bottles in the grass 

and walk to the first bus

before a panther falls from a tree. 

singing at the end of the world

now it's never
dark at night

long midsummer
in my mind

morning dose of
fool euphoria

then alone till
late at night

light still burning
in my head

---

birds are singing
even here

even at the
end of the world

birds are singing
birds are singing

let's go out to
where the birds are

singing at the
end of the world

vestigial virgin

[[ Wordplay on Vestal and vestigial, to begin with, and building on that to make this a woman literally in touch with her vestigial characteristics. ]]

The vestigial virgin

in morning retraces

the route she retraces

each morning she rises.

She touches 

the tip of her tongue 

to her four wisdom teeth.

She touches 

her tailbone and where 

her appendix might be.

She feels the hair rise on her skin 

and continues the tour

and comes away pure.

She chases 

a tingle that leaves her 

completely in tears.

She rubs her 

third eyelids and curls and 

wriggles her ears.

She feels the hair rise on her skin 

and continues the tour

and comes away pure.

the meanness of work

They put up new buildings
as fast as they can
tear down the old ones.

One fall, one morning,
one more old building
with that ornate facade

is fenced in and blasted,
pulled down on its face,
and just trucked away.

Spring come the excavators,
cranes, steel and glass,
then twenty empty stories.

the lifting night

The lifting night is leaving -

Birds begin.

Before the sun is up,

birds begin the day.

Before the moon is down,

birds begin the day.

= = = = =

This is where we all are

in this air between

our sun and moon and earth.

Inhaling and exhaling,

all exchanging

breath for breath for breath.

= = = = =

From tree to tree

a gathering of bird 

begins to dawn:

how once we preyed

and how we once

were preyed upon.