Late Night, Late September
These are the hours when ears do their work
to the clock’s even-handed ticking.
I catch the scrape of my neighbor’s trash can
being dragged to the curb, tractor trailers’ hum
as they ply the interstate a half-mile away,
refrigerator’s gush and shove
as ice cubes crash into their metal tray.
This is when my body plays its old games:
thoughts that slow or speed up,
breaths losing themselves behind my breastbone,
blood’s wild waterfall of bluff
and all the sloughing and shifting of bones.
Like marbles rolling in a jar, I hear the cramps
that threaten tomorrow, my left ankle’s turn
as I run up the back stair, another hair’s fall to silver.
The rustle of a bird’s wing
bruises fistfuls of leaves on my front lawn.
Cicadas scratch and rub during long nights
as September crawls toward extinction,
this whole house settling into its concrete shoes.
All the blank stars turn their faces away.
First Published in the Comstock Review
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