five pm, mid-winter
i thank Sky for taking sweet time.
Sky sets her thumb on the light-switch of the land.
she stands still, she waits.
for the hour, she meditates
on her day.
Sky hopes her skin
becomes verdigris the next day, not grey, but
verdigris to clothe nude trees. Or perhaps she will
hurt soon— Sky scars in
rainbows. Her change of thought: the small folks who have traveled
through her this day. She wonders where
they all
go.
Open your eyes,
do you hear Sky’s mute call?
in her meditation, hour of magic, all
wakes.
on the earth, photographers peer from their windows,
then rush through their doors to catch Sky’s dancing gleams,
beams flash through the tip-top’s of the Sugar Maple family,
their shadows splatter onto pot-hole streets.
Sky brushes her grass and her roads with paint of a gold hue,
fresh Rorschach tests while her thoughts try to rest.
i spot a leaf sleeping in the street, deep wine and apricot,
twisted from months away from its Mother
the wind levitates the leaf—lightly—and the sun
creates a squirrel of it, he climbs the tree, and scrambles over
to me. in short squeaks, he explains his political theory,
“why do you let your peep el let a few rich folks control
all others? why don’t you follow me
into the woods?”
he grabs my skirt with his sweet little paws
but i look up and notice the darkness,
i look down and see only a leaf again.
Sky’s savasana has ended,
candles ignite in the houses, Sky and Sun crawl into bed.
i’ll wait now for the selenian Sun, but i can’t rest my eyes. soon
i will escape with my new friend.
bittersweet magic: “the moment” lost in the sock drawer.
five pm, midwinter
the afternoon is reaching an end,
Lady Sky decides when she wants to change for us.
as the sun sets, she meditates.
some call it the “magic hour”
but how can you truly tell magic from reality?
go outside and see.
radiant beams do the tango on the trees
(a leaf in the street becomes a squirrel as my eye blinks)
a squirrel who runs straight up to me.
“get outta the system while you can!”
he squeaks, then nods at me to follow his path, another blink
the sky darkens, the squirrel disappears.