Gun Shots

The lush damp morning
gray-light rain and the green of outside
these folding fondled mountains
smoothed down

These quiet streets
mud and ruts like signatures
this June morning
quiet dawn

And cold, cold silence
the emptiness that follows two gunshots
they echoed in this sleepy Wednesday morning
seeming to break and burst again

When starlight was bitter
turn down this dreary dewy lane
labeled
and forlorn

The birds called
I could pick out a few
the dull thrill of identifying the unseen
eyes closed, brow damp electrical

The eclectic collection of scene after scene
played out on eye lids
the red and bloody screen
that rises now at ten or eleven to one

I long to see you
reach out and touch that fading specter
that shadow of flesh and hair
passing around each corner before and behind me

These quiet (misspelled) streets
of lust and loneliness
rising awake and asleep
feeling for the last hollow footfall and then it’s done

No more
it’s finished
at last
incomplete

The soundless dreary shadow
behind gunshots
fades behind some distant corner
and the birds resume the background white noise reverie