A Hag's Last Birthday

eaten by her own stride, city blocks half-lit

as country lanes, her gloomy covenant with

diurnal and nocturnal coup de grace.

a notch taller than short, stick-thin, dragging

around a hag's last birthday--face bald as an egg.

tattered habit--cowl over her head...whose

black cloth drapes down as if producing 

antiquated photographs of oblivion.

a strong wind gust rips back her cowl--loosing

petals from the cherry blossom wreath she wears.

as it rests crookedly.