Ah! -
Summer is here -
No, stop -
Something is wrong -
Gray rain collects itself
into chilled coal-water in the road.
Burnt cocoa & cigarette smoke
fill all the engravings of air.
Thunder arrives in bands of purple,
as hawks circle in the twilight,
piercing the configurations of grass.
The mockingbird slips from the holly,
as if embarrassed or ashamed
to be associated with this high fog,
this greenish pallor.
Where are our shadows,
that played upon the brickwork?
The sun refuses to commit
to this dismal June.
Rain begins to fall,
late in the morning,
& all throughout the afternoon.

Soft-boiled sun-yolk
spills west, and sill-shadow
splits and spreads
across chestnut slab:
a stillness - someone's missing.

Little nooses of rain extend downward
in black runnels from the char-cheeks
of death's head pillows that scrape
off the humid rust from a mid-afternoon.
Throw open the windows, let the dark
steam that climbs from the lawn clippings
approach the nose like an awkward dog,
until it clings in the back of the throat,
to be washed down with raw scotch.

The rough breeze dies in the shaking green
berries that dot the holly dome,
the rain stops in the street, chastened,
& fat clouds grease on westward;
she's not here and she won't be again -
her cast-offs lie in shallow oubliettes,
in shadow-bottoms of torn paper boxes -
but this new-shirt weather speaks her name
in the Braille-pecks of new, blue sky.

The purple folding face drips
into the cake-colored battlement:
night is here again.
The sun has kneeled into the treeline,
into the gauze-clouds
whose humid cobalt heads
hang, hang, just hang
all angled like hammers
in a carpenter's belt.  

Everything seems to be ending:
cicadas have erupted
in tens and sevens
with bright scarlet eyes
to die on the sidewalks
in little hums and hisses,
looking at me through
whetted blades of lawn.

I'm moving soon, to the point
of the old triangle
where we haunted
the coffee and ice cream store,
where she stole a little shining spoon
that we used to mix the luminous milk
into the coffee pool.

How will it feel, after dark,
under unfamiliar high-stippled ceilings?
So quiet - she's gone -
her vacant clothes
no longer flutter in the closet
when the breeze slips through.

Will some rain come,
blue-brushed brow,
& wash this feeling away?
I feel the night moving,
crawling on insect feet -
the air is full of absences,
great holes that go unfilled.

The wind is settled in the east,
and the clouds are gathering
heavy hems.
I find a single dark hair of hers
on the inside of the pillow case,
years later,
years later.

Intensity is the underdog story
Wild soil to a champion
Flame out, and maybe
Fell to the drink

Consistency is two years without
So much as a batted eye or a blink
Ten steps ahead, maybe half an inch per week
Books with battered spines stretched across coffee-stained sheets

Intensity is ***, or
A free trial for a week
Gold plated words
Tin can actions underneath

Consistency is the love, and
Knowing I know I will never know enough
Unconscious heartbeat
The very breath that fills my lungs

Will I remember this
day

ten years from
now

this lazy afternoon
where I slept late

because I was up
the night before

so much of my life
was spent

pushing the sun up
then shutting my eyes

to rise just in time
to see it bleed out

over the horizon

whit howland © 2021

You slipped
away from me,
like the robins and
cherry blossoms when
spring ends,
and the fractured nights
of winter comes.
I will search the
midnight alleys, and the
mountains of Chile.
I will listen for
your sweet laughter.
I long to taste your
honeysuckle lips, and
hear your heartbeat.
If I never find you,
I will be a lost leaf
on the lonesome
vagabond wind.