Sundown

What else do we open this

recklessly, when even the gloom

cedes its last hesitant light

from the garden’s tin canopy?

Our struggles today broke free

like an algebra of pigeons

making obscure vectors

up into the falling sky.

Just past the still sturdy walls,

wholly intact, all our questions

loom, seismic and maddening.

Please receive the night.

It’s walking through the forest,

it will hit the city streets soon.

A bird calls, its warble

safeguarded by one last small

confine of gold, blackened

crown of the horizon,

and the world now is smaller

but better for it.