Compass

In Alley

Soft stipple-drift hazes the blue between,
as lower clouds ease west
their patient covering of sun,

relegated to a pale eye again,
though dazzling cloud-skirts.

The wax and wane of heat
and leaf-lanterning light
goes on; and afternoon
rolls slowly a long cloud-bank over
the southern quadrant, with no end in sight.

Joe sits and laughs under the pear tree:
"For fucks sake!" guffaws,

then he's a stilled apparition
ghost banished to the garden back
for repeating the word 'alley' umpteen times
while Daddy is trying to write.

Reinstated at the table, where will-be roasts
laid out on two tin trays
recover from their ordeal in the boiling pot
its 'alley, alley' again and what's in the alley?

"Red Galaxy... long time ago."
"Yes"
"Alley, alley."
"No."

Far off, a sound of honking geese -
or is it simply distant dogs distrait
and sugar-buzzing children
barking and yelling and honking like geese,

as if the flat town had become a large lake,
cries over sedgy sighs, the water margin
finely frosted with ghosting zephyrs,
sun-diamonded momently?

till a bus,
in semi-somnolence of homely booms,
disrupts imagination,

big bike draws mind-drift
down dark rasp, smooth-sputtering oblivion,
all the way from town
and out past Bentley's...