Poem for Monday, June 22, 2015

Summer Solstice in Lonoke County, Arkansas

On the longest day of the year, the water-pocked air
has managed to drown in itself as the sun descends
into the final embers of the evening sky.
It's a quarter past eight, but it only takes minutes
for sweat to salify on my skin, to tumble down
the creases of my forehead towards a slow little
death. From my grandmother's porch, feet dangling
off the edge into a thicket of ivy, I gaze up to study
a flock of birds perched on the power lines
that bisect East Main. There are at least fifty of them,
charcoal-breasted, poised with the posture of
disciplined soldiers. Some are motionless. Others
flap their wings and shuffle around the wires
to find their appropriate place in the hierarchy of
a new summer. And then, there are those few that
are easily scared, maybe even ashamed, so they
fly away, tempted by the anonymity of the clouds.
Consider how you and I aren't so different
from them, how we've behaved in all of these ways.
Do not think I have forgotten those nights
we learned the order of each other with the sky
at our backs. Those mornings that slowly bled
into the moment where one of us was suddenly
not there.