Meeting Proserpina at the railway station

By the time the clouds are drifting down,
mocking the disappointment of heaven,
we’re walking hand in hand down the station steps,
at the pace of a bride, in step with the old radio playing,
splotching our shoes with the sweetest decay.

We walk along slowly, as a way of catching our breath,
holding it close and unpolluted, the old radio,
in front of her breast like a compass:
no real talking, not much looking at one another
(death becomes her, the company thereof).

In the all-around everywhere, people and pigeons
carry on excitedly, opening their lashless eyes,
the cooling now unmistakable,
the sudden death of the red sky summer.
Everybody knows.

These are gentle winters as far as their arrival.
No breeze shaving splinters of frost from the fog
at this point, no sudden stoning with hail. Just a cool
restorative misting, the clouds rolling about on the ground
like dreamed lambs. It’s a happy time.

Most plaintive in their joy are the scrawny chickens
that have established themselves in the heart of the city:
the way they hold their heads to the side and sing
like old people: a weakling choir of gurgling drains.
She’s back, she’s back.

Long tide turning

The fourth wise man, sat blue in the sand,
lamenting the loss of his kettle.
Who had taken his kettle in the night?
And where had all the water gone?
His ship has obviously sunk,
or rather, more obviously evaporated.

Not the worst of nights he decided,
if one didn’t mind navigational ambiguity.
The stars had climbed, unwound from a scroll,
taking their turn to brighten and wobble and fade,
as the ocean had done, so where did it go?
The illustrated bellows said please follow.

His pale blue palms, his only illumination,
might fail to signal the sandy spastic collapse,
the early flutter of a storm. But keep those curtains drawn,
your robe wound tight, batten down your eyeballs:
let no light bring in the panic of birds.
There’s only so much sweat you can wring into a mug.