5 or so best days in a year and
this is number five; is it not
mundane you say you don’t
look both ways, I pretend not
to want to either to shed
the child’s hesitation

we cross the street and play
the chiaroscuro keyboard of
cobblestones and garbage in
the tomb of shy light beneath the
last great green of the year

I look back half expecting to
see myself on the
other side still palsied gazing
upwards a stillborn spectator
trying to catch a dying cloud