Organic mixed media artwork by Kay Sexton
Off into the Sunset
There I go, sauntering along
as if I don't notice
this bright amber evening already
auditioning for your memory,
though naturally I do.
You can tell I'm savoring how
this magic-hour sunlight
ignites tiny tiaras atop the upper edges
of each somber object I pass
(car, stop sign, mailbox, car, wall),
like a swarm of small dawns I'll remember
to describe for you later—
meaning now—
as a sizzlation,
but not just yet.
I'm still basking in the facets
that gleam from bark and steel and brick,
flecked with a luster that will linger
just an instant longer,
though now it's arrested here.
Sort of. Anyway,
it looks like your mind—
your lovely, captious, queasy mind—is content
to cavort among these surfaces too, as if
the world's tide of misery
has receded somewhere far beyond earshot,
exposing this block's homely treasures
for us to admire with the just-
barely-not-ironic gusto
we share like a tic.
It can't last; it doesn't.
A sawtooth skyline steps in front of the sun,
some streetlamps blip on,
and the low-angled light
that'd made even the East River look good
for a moment,
departs. As do I.
You've plugged yourself back in,
and by the time you surface
from the cyan screenglow of your pent-up phone,
there's nothing left to forget
but the moment I turned the corner
into everything that happens next.
