Times Like This

Milennium of sunlight, lost
in translation. Midwestern sky. Arrhythmia.
Abandon. Circadian. Cicada as constellation.
As jaw, as aperture. Brusqued by dusk.
Developed in season. Squash rotting
to susurrus. Coattail, fluttering through
the shutter. Smoulder. State-sanctioned
demolition of all the toadstools
and their occupants. Flint strikes
a congregation of what were presumed
to be butterflies. But how
to fret a heartstring? Fear of the heart.
Formation of dew on their crushed
blue wings. Cloud 9. Bathtime.
Belief in Beethoven. Else ginseng
and its many medicinal properties. Fear
of the dark. Darkening harbour. Discovery
of meteors just under the skin. Harkening.
Stone-born. Haggler of dragons. Exultation
of starlings as a failure to speak. Like
magic. Magnolia’s final conquest. First
flight of my mother’s bones across
the Atlantic. All the dead waking, then
dozing back off. Times like this I wonder
what you were thinking, in all those flowers.