I am drunk on this new summer twilight, the world’s
wash is golden-hued burdens liberally poured, and so
I will roll in the fields where the corn is laid out in straight, sober lines, the light
Creeping between them like water rising slow –
I will lick the tree trunks and the underside of leaves garnished gold and pale yellow
And swallow it all down like whiskey, burning
I will dive between the slats of the hollow barns, catch the shining insects
In my teeth and crunch them like butterscotch beetles on the wing;
I will have another and yet another from my friend Sonny the bartender,
Who doles another round from the cumulus bar itself changing dreamily from an anvil tinged in pink
To the head of an armored dragon, trailing lazy smoke, and
I will pluck the sun drenched stones along the bowls of fields and roll them over my tongue and
Flick them back into the world I will tip
the cloud-dappled sky back and have it with my eyes, poring over its every curve,
My winter-cauled eyes desperate for the magic hours of long summer days, greedy for
The swollen clouds parting along a line of trees turned silhouettes;
I will not pay my tab before leaving, I will swagger and stagger out
Of this place, holding on to the backs of polished wooden fenceposts
Navigating the perils of this world with one eye closed to time, as it reels in its orbit –
Belly full of light, burping up slivers of afternoon
I will wander down the lane, I will find my way, shaking bits of fading light
Out of my hair, wiping it from my mouth, brushing it off of my clothes,
Tracking it in crumbling pieces across the kitchen floor on my way to my spinning bed
Where I will slowly sober up and fall down
into darker and darker sleep
until the darkest sleep comes for me;
While outside, fireflies wink and dive,
threading the night with lonely stitches of light,
hitching close the wounds made but not yet felt
in the fabric of the new summer night.
Halfway North 