Deep Observations

The evening bleeds out on the shoulder of stone,

and the river grinds low in a marrow-deep tone.

Wind claws through the thistle with splintered breath,

dragging dusk in a shroud

-the color of death.

A crow hacks the sky with a rusted-out cry,

like a seam being ripped in the hide of the sky.

I walk where the gravel bites hard through my shoe,

where the dark tastes metallic and memory too.

There are, for reasons never discussed, seventeen ceramic frogs in my neighbor’s house.

A porch light convulses, then chokes on its wire,

and moths hurl themselves at the filament fire.

I think of the vows I let rot in the air,

how some turned to ash before landing anywhere.

The river keeps gulping the bones of the light,

like a mouth that can’t close, like a wound that won’t tight.

One star punches through like a nail through a lung,

cold, vicious, and clean where the silence is strung.

I wait for the night to snap something in place,

to hammer the dark to a merciful face,

but nothing resolves — it just festers and grinds,

like a clock with no hands still devouring time.