The calico-gray quilt of clouds
is no longer backlit by a sun
we won't see all season.

The naked sky of summer
reclaimed its heavy covers from storage,
the ones it needs to keep warm
even on the mildest autumn evenings.

And of all the planes I study all night,
just one lands

The rest talk over me,
struggling to reach the ceiling of this town
to pierce it and flee through the bareness behind it

The metal bird sheds ash
and demands attention in the darkness.
A lack of color trails
as it descends
across the space between the ground and the sky.

Slowly, it settles on the town
looking so much less threatening there,
like a joke even, resting on the stone heads
of the gods and goddesses in the park.