Let’s say
you are here,
where the sultry coast meets the afternoon
and the afternoon creates an atmosphere
of camaraderie and drags its feet into the night.
We skip along the seaside inn over red-brick streets
and cul-de-sacs and question why
a lone gull sits on a buoy bound for fiercer storms.

There’s a crackling fire, a happy hearth, a mantle graced
with photographs and a little bird rests on a branch of porcelain,
perhaps a loon beyond its pond.

There’s lyrical mist about the room,
a thirst for poetry;
we drink its lines,
sip its similes

and know that writers live and die and love
and linger in past adventures more than anyone else on earth;
we know they leave a bit of self along the margins.

Despite the deaths that plague my autumn, I revel
in the season.
I recall the cool, clear days of what was once infatuation,
a focus noticed by so many, a realization known by none.

Let’s say
you are here,
on a wooden bridge in Hardin County
where the morning glories form the day,
where the murky river is a blue lagoon.

Oh look,
I’m a woodland hawk in a deadwood tree;
you’re a golden eagle.

sr