5 p.m.

Hoary tufts of winter weeds beard the slate slope, roadside. I know it is not winter yet with Solstice still some weeks away, and December cheats us on paper. It should be snow by the date but rain drenches raw black bared limbs uplifted shaking stiffened fingers at the sinking sky In front of me, homebound holidayers halted heated, in the southbound stream unwilling to witness (unlike me) the inky black pines block printed on a chemical tinted sky My eyes glaze carmine in the light of countless tails Rivers of wet red run on black down to the bridge, over the river through the air mocking the waters below I count three seconds moving for every thirty of patience. I am aging, here in this queue. I should breathe. I should sing. I should let it flow away, all this tension, unused Instead I watch and here I write by the green of my submarine dash. The occasional swash of sodium orange spills through my slow-moving cell Steely night sends us each home in solitary; but toward the traffic, I find myself tempered looking at the stained glass sky, unlined unlike this hiway, a transparent firmament where, with just one glance, I am home