Sunday's Undersong

 

Play those flirty notes to
someone else's neighborhood infant child
topless in a too big lightbulb head
and white diaper
some son of another white man
polka laughing at passing cars in flippant melody
melancholy Sunday sounds
fresh lawn grass cut to a carpet's relaxed charade,

the sun's sharp evening shadows stretch
o'er renter's roof tops
angling over old shingles
and in the pine needle blasts cling
outstretched red bark fingering the last
golden curtains of the weekend,

over here it's the smoking hour
wreathed in a witch's crown climbing
fists of silver foxtail smoke
the color in my beard finally
beginning
to betray my age
openly defiant
those lonely notes
calliope through the chain link
yard notes
above the din of Sunday going down
a thimble-full of undersong
of dusted flower olive drab
and pyramidal
some truth hidden now laid barren
in these ageless bones,

glow of the hot fire in my glass
rush of blood
stiffening the life of my soul's manifest
the last of the light
vanishing
and now, we wait suspended yet again
this beacon in bondage to our every hope
to reappear
to steer us onward past morning,

open window
open so my little green gypsy can thrive
the crying infant son
the treason of gray growth
the flute notes flirting still.

TA