The day will exhaust itself if it keeps running away;
Shadows may fetch its hills as they fetch the floors—
There is all the grime of family life portraiting
Seamy corners perfumed with stale smoke
Blackened as it comes with twilight,
Narrated by cracked smiles and “some’re” teeth
Stories of the happy winds, the simple views
Pits of bromide comforts and steely prides
And all around resilience to spiting one’s face.
Even as the sky waxes intense the pink of waning day
I find no hope in the west, but a weight pressing
On the very outcropping of my birth—
These modern monks, these pretty babes
Calmly lie in for the new day; it is behind the mountain.
It is from there the stars themselves unfold
From their translucent dirt and the last beautiful word
Of home is heard, something like country tears
And watching myself grow too fast for my liking,
The stars are not ready for counting,
They’ve lost that allure
Puffballs glow on the hill, lost souls on the grazing lands
Finding, at once, where the winds of change will take them
Everywhere, nowhere, freed and sobbing and mocking the
Birds and the flowers all praising themselves natural,
Taking my lungs’ air to the milky distance
As it starts to run and on and so on…