*

Just after five, the sun has been down almost an hour.  It did not warm above freezing

today. The delivered supermarket lilies start to open. I guess I could invent some other,

earlier TGIF to occupy.  Maybe not—nostalgia as useful as a vagrant’s zip code tattoo.

*

I associate places with things that fly—this coast gulls, California willets and sandpipers,

Hudson Valley bald eagles, Pago Pago fruit bats and airborne coconut beetles.  Here in

the village the air space has been empty all day, and everything murmurs pointlessness.

*

Despair is the church’s ultimate sin.  It’s also crazy, like getting pissed off at fresh dusk

or celebrating what our senses censor—that sound of wings in the sudden darkness.