Day of wrath! Day of mourning! When the world dissolves in ashes!
– From the Burial Service For The Dead
On this hot desperate day
a man in a rumpled porkpie hat, sweat soaked t-shirt and shorts leans against the balustrade
of his wooden plank porch breathing heavy, breathing shade, squints back over the last fifty feet where he nudged against humidity with slumped shoulders,
more shuffling than running, jabbing at air with arthritic fists
He swears to himself he can outrace it, knows he can,
said so in a magazine –
how he can outrace the moment when a vessel in his brain unravels like a yesterday:
When as a boy on the steps of this same porch he waited
in fear and wonder for the blast of the piercing town whistle that silenced Main Street and announced the sudden arrival
of high noon