THE CURIOSITIES OF DECLINE
 
 
Stillness through rainy fog—
car’s creep through flood pools,
sidewalks padded with oak leaves cloak.
Light held, luminous, grieving.
This dying is no surprise.
Helicopter’s flyover burr
flattens through its sweep.
Ferals slink the pavement’s driest line,
shadows skew under
streetlamp, dripping bough.
Cooping in a stairwell,
a panhandler’s broken shoes
soak in standing water.
Incense of pot smoke, cooling charcoal
disorders the slow-stirring breeze.
In other days, it was easy
to speak of the dead.
Bright day to bitter afternoon,
never trust the suicide’s mythology.