Number 132: Running Late

Light poured from streetlamps shatters on asphalt.
Black diamonds everywhere and a car
Hurtling forward,
No regard
For what is crushed beneath its tires,

heedless

of how it sends light,

like thought,

skittering

across

the surface of things,

Refusing

to let it gather itself into something

like illumination.

So let them blur, those strung-out deputy moons.
Let neon-yellow french-fry signs,
some flashing red peripheral blur
bleed over them.
Nothing to see here,
Except, ahead, a vanishing point.
All lines converge,
Road narrows to some tiny place where I have wedged myself.
Obligatory box made of time.

No time

to see the real moon
who’s put his nightcap on,
pulled it low over a forehead grown warm and orange in firelight
where stories are told, whispered
out into night
like black diamonds, falling.

Realize too late I should have caught them —

no not them, just one —

and found the time (I had it) to let it melt upon my tongue.