Curfew
A man across the way swings his broom
as if he’s lost his mind
or has declared war on the cobwebs in there.
Below him, in the park, an American Elm
sways from deep frog green to dusty lime.
The breeze will blow itself out,
the marionettist needs a smoke break.
But, there’s more where that came from.
Nature is a hippodrome,
an everlasting gobstopper.
The water in the creek that crawls
past our home is newborn every day
even though the creek itself is ancient.
At night as we balance ourselves
between what just was and dream,
we hear it sneaking toward the sea.
The lights from the construction site
look more and more like campfires
as we draw down on our camelback
of whiskey. Clouds crowd in near dusk,
the remaining light cinches a belt
around the pants of the horizon.
Is this production staged for us
or did we conjure it from nothing?
And, when exactly, did they plan
to tell us about the curfew?
Dusk gives way to infrared dark.
All of the elements evolve toward the elemental.
Bursts of color from the lower left
migrate toward the middle.
Fires luminesce the right edge of vision.
The palette ignites like a switchboard.
Our synapses flash with heat lightning.
We cower in a corner of nascent night
a fold-worn map at our feet
and wonder if today might be the day.
Edward Johnson is a civil rights attorney who has spent the past 30 years representing people living on and over the edge of homelessness. He is now living fulltime in a cabin in the North Cascades mountains. He has work recently out or forthcoming in: Eclectica Magazine, Indefinite Space, Ginosko Literary Journal, Packingtown Review and Evergreen Review.
Amethyst Review 