night is falling,
          falling,
       falling
the clouds rush to and fro,
needless journeys with no end nor beginning
scrolls of verbs written across the sky in messy
tangles
of confusion and stress and mayhem.

wind picks up leaves and dances with them,
but tethered they are and tethered they shall stay
and the wind quickly finds the only companions that are his to keep for a while longer
are birds and misplaced people wrapped in tinfoil.

a noise echoes from far away
singular ears strain toward the nothing that is something
searching for more and more

as something begins less and less to shine
and the stars never rise from bed
except to manifest themselves as wet teardrops
from which everyone hides, sheltering himself,
discouraging any future expression
of weariness and quivering and loss.

the tears meet the grass in a show of quiet surrender
the grass turning to their nighttime lovers
yearning, ever so much farther,
to be reunited with another display of lacerated love
from the shy sky and affected darkness

i also regard myself to the stars’
seeking one lash of freezing acknowledgement,
seeking one who knows what i feel down here
seeking, if only because i am not everyone
nor am i alone a stone,

but i am the clouds,
the stories,
i am the wind, alone in joy and pain,
i am the whisper from the mountains, never heard but always uttered,
i am the stars, never seen but ever seeking,
i am the rain, a magic, shunned by all but those who crave life,
i am the grass, hoping in vain to meet to the one i love in joyful tandem,
i am they, and they are i,
and i sit in a seat to my left and shake as my soul is read from a paled paper
hoping to the roots that someone who is not everyone might come out of their home
and drink the sky with me.