beano

Midsummer.

water at dawn
running by fingertips
onto cold stone
as a robin intones
ripe throated
staccatos
that bounce
along walls
that have seen it all

should one
be happy
wasting days
observing the gap
between taste
and ability
under a giddy sun
that announces all
with just a few
spare syllables

I made a song
to enchant the night
like Scheherazade
striving to hold off
the encroachment
of a decree,
but I\'ve come apart
from the seam
snagged
on the narcissism
of nostalgia

those bright
waterfalls of dust
continue to gather
in fine heaps
by the curtain
and a brown river
smokes on
eddying
inscrutably
in the deep

we are just 
migratory animals
that never
really move
I won’t live
this day again
though I
live it again
a thousand times.