I went outside to look for the moon, to see the moon and think of you besides. The sky all stars and silhouettes, the scrub pines and hedge cypress against the light washed night. But the moon was missing, and you were too, though I didn’t expect to see you. Even the moon avoids me, even the stars take a pass. The night too far gone into the morning, the next day too near to count. I check the calendar, I check the clock. Another set of maybe sos and guesses not. Satellites and wanderers, the winking goodbye of a passing plane.
Sleep won’t come easy, and there’s nowhere left for dreams to go. A feeling slow in passing, a pillow tossed and wadded through the dawn. Daylight lingering in the window, the television busy being on. Letters to be written no longer, presents only left in the past. Nothing but the leaned on alma mater, nothing but the photos in the roll. The songs that stick to once shared spaces, the litter always playing in the wind. The afternoon with the moon overstepping. The night so thick so fast so long.
Now the wind is tripping through the treetops. The moon is up there waxing in the pines. The day left late in a few hard strokes, a totaled motorcycle and a kid busted up in the debris of a redwood fence. Another dent in my old jitney, the broken mirror sheered clean once and for all. The neighbors gathered to parlay and gossip, the cops on the driveway in scads and swarms. More unwanted gifts, more chores moving up the list. Another story with no one to talk to. The sky given over to the night.