coyote yelping helps;
the winds, too, distract him
from the now

the Comanche who
put the arrow in his back
lays beside him

gone before him;
that is condign comfort
to him

he cannot speak, nor move
his tongue, but he smells the
*****, the creosote

he sees the clouds,
stingy white whiffs in a hot
summer sky

as good a day to die
as any he reckons, and
he feels no pain

again the yelping,
closer now -- are they talking
about him?

will they beat the buzzards
to his body? would they begin their
feast while his eyes are yet open?

he closes them; the flapping of
the wings does not arouse him--he
knows they are on the Comanche

beaks and talons at work
he lets himself drift, content the
vultures are choosing the dead

but they fly off; the coyote pack
approaches--the pads of their paws
patter on the hard caliche

he lets himself sleep
dreaming now of sweet green grass
and good water

and the coyotes begin their work:
the ***** and he now a solitary offering
for the ravenous dogs

I met him, a week short
of being a teen, his number one-three celebrated
on Labor Day that year

his father wanted him to understand
how the "A" word would impact his life
in a peopled world

I agreed, and soon
he explained tachyons, photons,
and other “on”s I can't recall, in my
twenty months as his "healer"

he needed no catcher in the rye
to keep him from falling off the cliff
for edges did not apply to him

not in his world of curved
space and time, quantum quarks, and
pleasing cosmic rhyme

when it came to the bend
in time when we were to say goodbye
he could not understand we would not
meet again, though he was leaving
city and state

for him, minutes, hours, days
were shapes and sounds I could not hear--no
I would never come near, seeing beyond
Newton's silly spheres

but he could escape
the gruesome grip of gravity
without blinking an eye

my final entry in his file,
was the "A" word he would need
fear: Adult, not Autistic

3900 light years from earth
a mere 1.2 billion miles across,
makes me wonder who your master is
and what magic it takes to fill
your feeding bowl

I wish I could ****
the kiloparsecs keeping us apart
and see you, unleashed, maybe chasing
Frisbees left by the barking big bang

I hope you don't bite

I began writing of thee, 63  
but after considerable effort and time
belched out only glib rhyme  

when I recalled my last walk,
however, it was in winter woods, only yesterday,
the frozen ground crunched under my ancient boots,
speaking to me in its own verse  

“move fast,
this white art won’t last,
make your tracks deep, soon
we’ll not make a peep”    

so I complied,
stomping on the frigid frost
shuffling with aging caution on thick ice  
watching my breath mist gray
the still air  

was such the entire walk
one foot after another, making tracks
lesser numbered beasts would sniff and see…  
fading remnants of the me    

then I saw you, crystalline knives  
hanging from brittle branches long ago grayed  
reflecting all that came within your sight  
in your solid time, dripping drops slowly,
silently, before freezing once again
in the approaching night

I knew Pearl, comely, calm Pearl
eyes as blue as the skies
that warmed her sands
where we walked and talked
dreamed the days away
her voice so sweet on the Pacific winds
it made me forget about home
I was breaking daily bread
dipping it in the
yellow yolk promise of eggs
when little gunner Joe
said come down below
to see the kitty he found
crouched in the shadowed corner
no bigger than the rivets
get her some milk he said
when we placed the offering in front of her
she roared a lion’s roar…
and the roar kept coming
and the young living
thing
disappeared into the darkness...
the stench of smoke
the screeching screams
the fierce rocking of the hull
and blackness
which came too fast to touch
all spoke with equal madness
telling us doom
can come on a sunny Sunday morn
in Pearl’s land
falling,
is something we all know
in the flat land of dreams
in the lucky light of day, and
on that Sunday morn,
in the boiling bowels of our ship
slowly,
with some giant hand in command
the water, the water,
the water we all had grown to love
now taunting our feet,
then our knees
the pounding began
the eternal pounding
the pounding of the hopeful
in Pearl’s blue skies
and our pounding,
the pounding of the ******,
without any eyes
the water
now at our waists
now at our chests
and then only our frozen faces
against the hard steel that had been our home
had the last few breaths of air to breathe
heard the last few gasps of desperation
and the feeble futile pounding
of those in Pearl’s darkened sun…
now we rest in this sunken tomb
the guests roaming above
with cameras and tearless eyes
for they were not
the ones who heard our cries
those who did, do not return
for Pearl is no longer a sunny beach
and a stroll in a dream
but a place where the pounding started
and never stopped
and where the world changed forever
when the first bomb was dropped

the ville was just women,
old men, young children--mostly gaunt ghosts
before my platoon arrived with our own dead
men walking

I gave the order to burn the village,
rout its dazed denizens and grease any
who offered resistance

only one woman did, clawing
at my boys like a crazed cat, going after Freddie
from Fresno with a bamboo stalk

I don't know who shot her
but I remember standing over her
with Freddie and Mickey from Milwaukee
who stepped on a mine within the hour

Freddie bought it too, but not until
that night, when small arms fire from the jungle
woke us from our dread dreams

the apparitions that haunted our heads
whenever we spilled the blood of innocents
or even the red devils' kin--perhaps
an equivalent sin

the next day we ****** back
to base camp, a twelve click hike;
as hours passed, and the earth dried,
our shadows became sharper, darkening
reminders we could run
but never hide

he slammed his cup on the counter  
not to get anyone’s attention
though his cup was empty  
I couldn’t stop staring at his eyes  
of course they were bloodshot  
and of course he stank of nicotine
and of truth that he said could not be found
in the bottom of that coffee cup or bottle of gin  
though he ****** up both  like…
hell, I can’t compare it to anything  
and he would think a simile was a waste of words
he told me of a lover he once had, Elisa  
with hair so long she sat on it  
and a thirst as ravenous as his  
which led her to an alley in South Chicago
where the ***** or the H put her to sleep
for good, and how he buried her in Peoria
in a hard freeze, beside her brother
who got killed in Phu Bai, by “friendly fire”
but Bukowski laughed through his tears
when he heard that ****, “friendly fire”
and he filled his glass again,
with Bourbon I guess--I wasn’t at  Elisa’s
numb mother’s house that day
and when he lost another ****** lover
to a drunk driver, he didn’t say anything about irony  
just said, ****, it hurts to be close  
and he didn’t trust this happiness ****
because it didn’t last, but pain, hell,
you can count on that ******* and if he leaves,
you can make some up on your own…  
the waitress filled our cups to the top
so there was no space for the cream  
I sipped slowly to make room
he took a swig that had to scald his tongue
but I could not tell, for he was already on the death
of lover number three, sitting there with me  
waiting for him to stop the foul flow of truth

I did not go out to see it  
the winds were too cruel  
as April’s cocky currents often are  
though the sky was a clean black palette
on which it painted perfect its orange face   

inside, in the incandescent haze
you were restless, reaching up from the bed  
at ghosts I could not see  
you were seven and eighty,
and there were many
who haunted your nights,
especially now, when the doctor had said
nothing  was left to be done,
but the watching and waiting    

he had given you little
of Morpheus’ sweet sap, as per your request  
and I left the light on, as you demanded  
what about the dark did you not like  
save what we all fear, as the end grows near?    
for whom were you grasping?    

I suspect I knew, from the old days,
when I would sit on your knee,
the other big people there with you  
swapping stories in the gray Lucky Strike air  
you thought I was too young to understand
(and I probably was)  
you thought my mystic memories
of that slur of beer buzzed words
would trail into the city night,
like your smoke  
(but they did not)  
sooner or later, mostly later,
you and your buddies
would get around to the ships  
I would see sails and pirates
but your tongues would paint thunder and steel
(which I somehow could taste)  
Eddie the **** and David the Jew,
those were the two, the ones
you let slip through your hands  
the ones the salted sea took too soon  
your eyes were not bleary
when you told the tale,
every sentence punctuated
by a swig of Schlitz, a drag off a ***
your buddies told their own stories  
of those who slipped through their paws  
or were blown “all to hell and back”
or drowned, without a simple sound    

those were the spirits
for whom you reached,
anemic apoplectic apparitions
in the indifferent  air, but still there  
for only you to see, waiting for you
while I wondered when you would join them  
and if I would yet brave the wailing wind
under the blood moon

a cairn on every mountain
chronological tricksters stacked
by near naked natives, or frat brothers
who pointed the way there
with crushed Bud cans?

fossils were less disingenuous,
treasures from a Jurassic sea, staring  
back at me--coprolites a fine find, evidence
our voiceless progenitors also
squatted and shat

after days of wilderness
wandering, I found a lonely menhir
tall as two men, wide as one, in no
particular vantage point
to the sun

who carved this monolith
I'd never know; how it was dragged here
would vex me even more

I sat beneath its shadow
until it stretched a desert mile
all the while watching, waiting
for someone to return
to claim it

when no one finally did,
I rubbed my hands on its weather worn flanks,
and bid goodnight to ancient strangers  
who worshiped this silent stone

so keen were his senses he could
discern differences in grains of sand,
hear gulls' calls long before others, and
recall the number of footprints
he left on his stretch of beach

yet he spoke not a word
since she passed, stolen from him
by a fever he felt from across the room,
while others had to lay hands
on her to know

the doctor would come
and go, whispering words to his father,
not realizing the boy could hear: "typhoid"
lay in his lexicon along with "suffering"
and "death"

then the priest and prayer
too late for the woman--there
for the father, son, and her ghost;
beguiling words like "comfort"
and "eternal life"

the boy did not reveal
being mute was of his volition
allowing less sentient beasts to believe
his silence was a manner to grieve
"ruse" he also knew

months did pass, and the
others implored him to speak;
he would return again and again
to his shore, where he heard
wings and winds and more

but there no creature
asked for his tongue to move;
his naked feet in the surf were enough
and when his tears wedded the waters
the sea made not a sound

Fifty years ago today

A half century. Yes--seems like a long time when we say it that way, sublimely forgetting time is a dimension we chop cheaply for convenience. In earth time, in galaxy time, the vast blue stretch since the cosmos’ first coding coughing of carbon, that five decades has been but a clipped comma in a thousand page tome, with a single stout capital letter being the history of a country, and a verbose sentence or two being the tale of our two legged species. For me, the 50 years since that day has been most of my book--nearly all that has been written since the dawn of light.

I was on the Kanto plains of Japan, so it was already Christmas--though I guess my world has always spun faster than most. During the night, my father had assembled my new black three speed 26 inch Raleigh English racer, a serious upgrade from my red 24 inch Schwinn, my first bike, long lost to spinning memory, and likely the property of some dump in the heartland.

The new bike stood beside the table in our large combination kitchen/dining room of our temporary officer quarters. I can’t recall if it was too cold to ride that day, but I probably ventured out, either in the real rays of the sun or in the land of imagination, the two being of equal measure in the realm of memory.

A month before, my father woke me with the news of Kennedy’s assassination. Like others who were old enough to remember, the events of that November day have much crisper edges than any other, including the Raleigh racer Christmas or any Christmas I can recollect.

Tomorrow is another Christmas. I won’t look at that day too much when I am walking in the park this afternoon, for tomorrow is not waiting for me at all. It will be there even if I am again dancing with stardust. More likely, I will be here, on the same rolling rock, eating the flesh of a fallen gobbler and making new memories I will recall only hazily in fifty hours. And if I were promised another fifty marching years, I might lament their passing before they arrived, knowing full well they too would be filled with forgetting.

the atom waits, patiently
he knows no haste
has no grand plan
but when it comes to waste
he is THE proverbial man
we claim to know
his magic and his math
though when watching his show
he often takes a capricious path
dividing and multiplying
when only asked to add
grounding us when flying
replacing haughtily happy with soberly sad

we no longer hide under desks in schools*
or worry about bombs being dropped apocalyptically
but we would be even bigger fools
if we expected him to behave any less cryptically

we are still on the beach
staring at the place from whence we all came
anguished that Eden is not within reach
but can the tiny atom shoulder all the blame?

After you involuntarily defected
I managed to find words others selected
to grandly commemorate your life

When I read of the third person you
and try to embrace elegiac points of view
I have to admit I feel…nothing

Maybe there is some cyber symphony
playing in the sky you can no longer see
pounding on so many drums you can no longer hear

But I keep reading my “google bible” verse
and try to imagine the funeral crowds disperse
once the scripted lamented chants are silent

Soon the vicissitudes of chemistry will prevail
and the third person you will set sail
to the land of oblivion, until I find another eulogy
or someone writes one for me

***** and he
make their way
across the stretch
of sand

behind them,
the hard rock land
of memory

the crustaceans
will return--the tides
their clock

not he;
this march
is his last,
waves will
swallow him
gag him

while he briefly
forgets his purpose  
and clings to
this world;

soon though,
his lungs with fill
he will sink
to depths:

a blue burial,
a seaweed symphony
his dirge

the ***** return,
but not he--the ebb and flood
of waters no longer
his province

(poem's image: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1174175556043500&set;=a.102525519875181.1742.100003531994461&type;=3&theater;¬if;t=like¬if;id=14914495906541620

Will was drawn to that spot
spirits or not, something-body pulled him there
like a mystic magnet that attracts flesh

and flesh he found in that grove, between
a stubborn hackberry and twisted oak: mother and newborn,
their blood soaking the prairie grasses

he walked the hard mile to the pay phone
passing but one unfriendly ranch house on the way
a growling cur keeping him at bay

the operator connected him
with the sheriff who collected his one deputy
and was there in half an hour

Lord Almighty, Lord Almighty
the deputy kept saying, those chants hanging
in the hot air above the bodies  

while the sheriff checked for pulses,
his khaki pants painted round red at the knees
for he was too old to squat  

neither knew the girl, who couldn't
have been age of consent, but the baby looked pink,
strong, though still as stone

the ambulance couldn't make it there;
the driver and deputy carried them out
on one stretcher

both commenting how light
their fated cargo was, how it was a shame
they perished in that old copse

Will knew that was meant to be
when he found them: the little one first clinging
to a dark warm sea inside

forced out by time, her helpless heaving,
and some invisible hand that took part in all matters
of flesh, spirit and bone

the same hand that did not cradle them
but at least found them shade, a cool but cruel
reprieve from their terse time in the sun

Sweetwater, Texas, 1959

Inspired by Frank Wilbert Stokes' painting, The Phantom Ship

gobbled ten years ago  
by greedy gales and warped waves  
the SS Wilbert lay somewhere
off the Grand Banks  

forgotten by all save
one sailor’s widow, who yet wandered  
the sands, daft they said, to wait
for the ship’s belated return    

no resurrection would occur
its oaken beams, cargo, and sad ******
on the ocean’s black floor, fodder
for creatures without eyes, ears  

yet she swore she saw
its billowed masts, its hardy hull
riding ready waves on a blue horizon,
dark, but safe from tempest

fishing the river is for old men,
solitary figures who saw their original sin
and now see darkness closing in

for old men, who watch
the leaves pass on soft singing waters
to them, it matters not if they make it to the black sea,
tarry a while on a quiet bank,
or sink into the silt

for old men, who dream while awake
whose eyes no longer flutter but squint
in the sun’s naked white journey
from shore to shore

when their line becomes taut,  
a slow dance will ensue, not a battle in a larger war
they once felt compelled to fight--raging, raging against the night,
for fish and fisherman know, when the conversation ends the line  
will again be loose, drifting on currents, bound for the certainty
of uncertainty

fishing is for old men, I
am haunted by waters

I do not have a picture of you
except the gray one drifting in my head  
I will feebly tell the world about you
and your three walls
the grated window does allow the morning light  
to shine upon the graffiti prophets’ words
a scratched and scrolled novella
on the ancient cold bricks  
the indelible tales they tell
hang above the pocked porcelain pools  
where the unclean
were scrubbed by the unholy  
who thought them unworthy
of their sacred soil  
some would scream during the rituals
not at the pain of the brush
or the eye sting of the careless lye,
their rabid cries
came from the vacant eyes
of their captors
who did not see them
in their naked splendor,
speak their forgotten names
in the dead morning air, or  
even hear them,
when they cried to their gods for mercy,
to be released from their pestilent past
and to be made blind
to the servant’s silent suffering
only they could see

Cool crisp half moon
sends shimmering shaft across charcoal lake.
A thousand winking waves blindly greet light.

White water foul
pedal silently across giant dark pool--
webbed feet wandering in black depths,
where teeming life hides without seeking
and does not disturb my walk in night air.

No sounds are to be heard--I don't utter even a noble word.
Inside in my own black depths, feet from the surface also stir the stillness.
When light of day washes this dark peace aside,
I will wonder where it went to hide,
and if I have another night under crisp cool light,
watching waters and birds in rest from flight.

thirty years
since Mark gunned you down
thirty years, passed
like a long sleepless night
that ends with taunting morning light
no brilliant sunrise grandly pronouncing
a glorious new dawn of man
although that would have been your plan
with your entreaties to give peace a chance
and imagine, imagine, imagine

now I kneel in this rain gray park
like a reject from some holy ark
a pilgrim in doleful disappointed pose
after seeing what your earthly brothers chose
was not to imagine a world of peace and love
but to wear reality like a cast iron glove
making mockery of your martyred chants
proceeding like a billion scurrying ants
deaf to your childlike pleas

across the soaked soil where your ashes lay
yesterday and today…and tomorrow
I feel the soggy sorrow
that you would have felt
if you could still see
all the rage of humanity

there is silence sandwiched between silence
thanks to the sudden cessation of their croaking
as if a plague took them, but it didn't

nor were they sleeping, nor were you,
at 0300 hours--you were between guard towers,
with an M60, and a hunger for sound

though you were picky about your song;
you longed for their familiar cadence, for
their green belched reassurance

that they would lay more eggs in the mire
and tails would grow, the swimmers would
become singers of familiar verse

but you could not wait for a resurrection
you did not know would occur--your duty would end
at dawn, and by then you could be dead deaf

from their silence

on the rail, not far
from where a young woman jumped
to a lonely death in the cold bay
I found you, in the fog

someone's wedding ring
perhaps once cherished, intended to seal
an eternal bond, but now this band lay
alone, silent, still, on dumber steel

who left you there?
not the doomed woman, for she took her final leap
two Christmases before, and her ring was found
on her withered hand

soft rain began to fall,
like a million tears for forlorn lovers
yet I stayed on the bridge, frozen in time and place
not from the shivering shower

but by the sight of one round, gold trinket
left for fickle fate after another circle had been broken
forever, for my eyes to see, at the edge
of another promised eternity

I see black ones, white ones,
tall ones, short ones

the stops have no benches;
only signs, saying:

we stop here, to ****** you peasants
from the mean streets

some lean on the poles, weary
of waiting for their ride

or the winning lottery ticket
they dream of buying

others hunker, if their knees
still allow such a stance

or by chance, pride doesn't
keep them upright

the last one I saw was curled
in fetal repose

dead or just resting, preparing
for a new beginning?

I will never know, for I didn't
stop, at the bus stop

but I'm with them, traveling hope's
haggard, hapless highway

swish, swash
under a blue moon
you, in your chariot, racing north
on Highway 1

while I look for footprints
in the sand--five toed tracks to prove
you were here with me

swish, swash, sea songs
replacing your voice, like I had any choice
but goodbye

after your confession,
and your appeal for absolution,
on the same shore we first lay,
naked

and walked until the sun rose
above the silent cliffs--the same bluffs
you climbed now to be with him

would you two also tread a beach
and marvel at weather worn gems, the purple waves'
evidence time smooths and soothes all things

I don't believe it
even as I find and finger new green and amber shapes
on this eternal stretch of sand

we are
all plagued
by some churning remnants
of haunting pain and shame
but we are not to blame
for repentance oft falls short
no matter how much we try to exhort
these murky maddening memories to depart
they flow yet in even the purest heart

for me
my crimes, too many to enumerate,
will all cause me to self deprecate,
but of the ones I seem to recall
the deed that taunts me most of all
was the simple thoughtless movement
of two five year old fingers
I used
to crush
two sublimely blue
robin's eggs
in a nest
on a promising bright afternoon
in the dark land of memory

why did you leave
without talking to me
I had to hunt you down
in the cyber world,
like some new age cop
in search of a common thief
the cancer took you
they said
you fought well
and did not let the demons of drink
torment you in your final days
they,
those who shared your space
at the end, had names
on their doors
next to yours
but I was with you
at the dawn of man
when we sailed dream ships
through seas of sirens
did you not want me there
while you spoke your last words
while the old dreams
spilled through the soundless air
I could have caught them
before they landed on the ground,
before others trampled on them
because they did not know they were there
did our time, our few moments together
in this long liquid languid
maddening minute, mean nothing
to you
why did you leave without talking to me
I would have listened,
even if you said not a word

thirty years
since Mark gunned you down
thirty years, passed
like a long sleepless night
that ends with taunting morning light
no brilliant sunrise grandly pronouncing
a glorious new dawn of man
although that would have been your plan
with your entreaties to give peace a chance
and imagine, imagine, imagine

now I kneel in this rain gray park
like a reject from some holy ark
a pilgrim in doleful disappointed pose
after seeing what your earthly brothers chose
was not to imagine a world of peace and love
but to wear reality like a cast iron glove
making mockery of your martyred chants
proceeding like a billion scurrying ants
deaf to your childlike pleas

across the soaked soil where your ashes lay
yesterday and today…and tomorrow
I feel the soggy sorrow
that you would have felt
if you could still see
all the rage of humanity

the old woman stopped crying

though she knew the tears would return
like the prairie winds, without warning,
from some place she could not see    

soon they would come for him,
place him on the gurney
cover him in white shroud
wheel him through the door:

a horizontal journey,
like the vertical one he had made myriad times before,
on two strong legs, to and fro the pastures and pens
where he did sweat honest work  

she leaned over to kiss him a last time
in evening's fading light

she had honored his final request and turned him
so he could face the open window--his old eyes then toward the red barn, the gray fences, the ground his livestock grazed  

past all this, to the flatland that seemed to go on forever

Vietnam

between honor
and complete disgrace
this place
I cannot forget

black vinyl
dusty in crumbling cardboard
but dressed up with flowers
and candy cane towers
records much of history:
a war that divided a country
riots that demanded equality
journeys to the center of the mind
and words like "for (all) mankind"

black vinyl
electric poetry of a bejeweled age
exhorting us to unlock our cage
and soar blindly in blissful flight
before the soundless eternity of night

black vinyl,
now replaced by the "CD"
in a silicon world of even more "me"
and reluctant as I am to revere what once was
I suspect that is what everyone does
when the day slowly turns to night
and we truly contemplate our plight
on this revolving orb that spins only one way
whether it is vinyl or CD we had to play

two tens, and seven, the square root of 729
no matter how the numbers collude in air, they are there
just as I drift off, before I catch myself thinking
of other numbers, like the age at which Jesus
died

twenty seven,
my four syllabled mantra, for that is the age
you got the needle

I was not a witness, but your attorney was
how he did not weep, I will never understand
he knew they put you in a diaper before you took
the final stroll

twenty seven, and during those final steps,  
your sins yet dragged behind you, like ball and chain, not severed
by the axe of repentance, the chisel of remorse

where did the gods fail, taking you so fast from
the dim lights of the b-ball courts and your dreams
of being Michael or Magic to the dead afternoon when
you strode up the cracked walk to that crack house
and put two thirty-two rounds in the eye
of your second cousin who came in first
on your short list

all because of a hundred dollar slight
and a spoonful of powder the world could mistake
for simple sugar

you didn't fight when they strapped you in
and your final testament to an uneven world,
an insolent audience, was, "it is what it is."

did you feel the tug on your *****, from the raiment wrapped
to hide your seeping shame, did it take you back a quarter century,
when a manic mama pampered you in pampers
and kissed your tiny tummy more times
than numbers could count, though
not enough

did you, like I, in the moments between light and dark,
between this world and one where you must sleep alone
see twenty and seven flash before your eyes
and disappear before you could realize
what the plaintive plungers
and naked needle meant

flung in the back of the '55
Chevy like another suitcase
the child knew not where they were going
only that they had been there before

more than once, when Daddy's
drink turned to anger, and anger
turned to fists pounding a boss
and another job was lost

and the child would again see
the lights of the town vanish: he, the car,
his preternaturally silent momma, his hung over
father would become part of the night

another flight, this time from Gallup
New Mexico, where Daddy had tried
to out drink every Navajo in every bar
and almost did

on these nocturnal hegiras, the child
would lie and stare at the headliner--the round
dome light a faint moon against
a mysterious sky

beams from passing cars
would roll across his otherwise
empty constellation, transforming dark
matter into fleeting nebulae

this, his wide world, while a slow
clock spun, and tires hummed, eternally,
until his father announced where they
were going this time

Iowa, a place the child
conflated with Ohio, vowel sounds
similar, soft and more meaningful than
marks on maps--Cedar something...

Cedar Rapids, and the child knew rapid
and rapid meant fast and fast meant soon, only
a few more saturnine stars around his dome
light moon, soon

not one
of the moon's mystic seas is filled
with their yelping  

though those
haunting harmonies save me from solitude  
on the naked prairies

the sky, cold, awash
with wispy clouds, carries their sour song,
a dirge no creatures emulate

like they, I howl at the proud wolf moon;
it ignores me as it does them, but  ‘tis regally round
for only a blink in time, then mournful
as it wanes to penumbra  
in earth’s shadow

the wild dogs and I
cease our serenade, but wait in darkness
to cast another refrain when the ornery orb again
filches the dying sun’s light