Michael T. Smith writes

Upon August’s Slumped Back

Upon August’s slumped back

the weight of the previous year

bends his crooked spine

with tender years.

And with this timely scoliosis,

his abject form

welcomes the wind unassuming,

a midnight guest

wandering like a mischievous child,

who comes to steal

what it wills

as the household goes off to bed,

windows open,

with a peace of being from nature’s massage;

and as in a bag,

my thoughts westward go,

like this fickle air,

to the drawn map’s end;

nobody knows

of the wind wrapped round

my pinky finger.

I hold it so tightly,

but now let it go, never to linger,

ever to dance with Astraeus,

as with a stranger sans affection.

For in this season,

the coffers are packed to the brim

with rare objects and predictions grim,

such are

conversations with my friend,

my mind,

in these confines

the size

of a mumble,

spanking the new-born hours into a cry

to wake the turn of Seasons,

who die.

The night’s cold has passing silent

escaped

like wards of a jail

for familial violence;

seasons, like the rejected bit of a song,

kill the following strain --

with strain in strain and by strain.

It’s a pledge to the darkness

of time fallen

outside our doors.