A morning’s grapefruit sun plays light across her back like gold leaves with a sword across her lap singing dirges for her still child typhoid plays a dark, dark game while swallows watch from the laurel leaves and fly on blue knives pulling banners of summer like a stubborn gold-eyed child never catching up She sharpens her blade to all the airway traffic, all the commotion from the hidden speaker Making way for the invisible parade static fender-benders AM/FM refugees hung in the air, like dirty laundry then running rampart through shadows and concrete forests that tremble with graceful electricity pronouncing body counts She turns off the radio and thrown down the picture frame that holds sepia tones of a sun-dressed little girl crying from a mid-west fever dream, then jerking wide awake seeing smoke from the field and tiger-eye from the creek that they find on July afternoons when the mud cracks like burned brownie Her little cul-de-sac on the ranch back home under Montana’s spacious ceiling full of kings with daisy-chain crowns and stray-light glances from nervous eyes under the balcony her lips are cool like two slices of ripe pear Evening’s sickle moon plays light across her back like silver leaves she breaks her sword in a burst of Casanovas singing hymnals for her laughing child while big dipper’s about to spill The swallows flying on blue knives pulling banners of constellations slicing them to failing light
