Thursday

As a purpled smear deepens, breaks off,
a storm-front darkening the water while even now the small minnows
feeding at the green skirt of hewn rock fitted along the near bank,

and calm the water lapping the shore with contented sighs and soft
murmurs scarcely aware of the coming storm the color of plum
dusted with fine grains of a paler hue;

yet even now as I speak it stirs vexed as if over some indigestion of
mother’s milk, but out there plying the water a fishing trawler in the
deeper channel sounds like that cat who was in the news recently

for clocking somewhere over one hundred and twenty
decibels
the loudest purring cat ever recorded -- loud, voluptuous.

But in my dream it’s the small fry feeding on cavernous rock;
after a slow promenade down-low and close to
a flower bed to the accompaniment of my violin, and the gathering up

the pleated folds of incidental music with those various flowers of
ambient sounds which have been there all along pretending not to be
noticed:

murmurs of the playground such as the soothing metronome of
the swing
of the swing somewhere behind us swinging a silent child

kicking heels in the air, or a mechanical bell to be ratcheted by
the thumb free of gripping handlebars, and some sort of broken
kazoo fluttering as it is sounding

-- trails off and then is found again
and then lost like a particular coin falls between the plumped up
cushions where it waits to be found again --

among fuzz-balls of distant traffic, and yellow taffy of passing horns.