Quiet Sky

for Tabitha The sun wanders westward towards the old frontier, dragging its heft across plateaus of New Mexico. Along Route 66, a quick toe-dip in Tahoe sets Reno aglow. Quicker than that, Nevada bucks, bankrupt and rusted. The Hindenburg above Wyoming, the sun gasps helium and flame, desists in the ether and disappears, leaving the world, simultaneously teeming with visionaries and traffickers, to moonlit Pacific quandaries. And so, it makes sense, Tabitha, your winter scarf worn in summer, frayed by the dull gleam of lost pioneers latched to your lips at their corner, wearing you down with heavy freight. But even then, I smile to see your sadness, the way you stack dark onto darkness. Because, in all the years I’ve known this street on which you and I are talking, no one has left me quite as you: facing due east, chasing a vision towards where tomorrows emerge from obsidian snare…and you sleep.