The bets all placed
the steps now staggered
reeling from feel to feel
moving from face to face
this absent dance,
this scramble across the parkway
the lights flashing out a four way
stop on some rainy yesterday
the slide unto impact,
another day saved for dreaming.
It won’t return, that
gleeful bleeding mortality,
that triumphal turn
fighting back from the incessant edge,
now fly the fists of mitigation,
this evil season sinking
into whatever skin is left.