As the title above states, this is not a poem. Apologies to all who may have gotten excited about the return of my poetic side, as far as I know it was last spotted purchasing a first class one-way air ticket to Costa Rica.
This is a rambling. It is the bizarre half-hearted sortie of my cold reasoning brain to create something attractive. For those of you who are in need of poetry in a desperate way, I prescribe Longfellow or Emily Dickenson.
The Street is Mine Tonight
The Street is mine tonight;
I alone share its company,
with the asphalt, with the gravel-rocks, with the street lamps burning orange in the dusk.
I listen to the comforting rhythm of my feet-falls, like the beating of a mothers heart,
Soft rubber on hard asphalt, two feet on a single road.
Ah yes, the street is all mine tonight, mine alone to cherish, to share with none. I alone see these dusky treetops, alone I smell the summer air. No one save my two pattering feet- afterthoughts of my wandering curiosity- serve to break the silence.
Perhaps it is a selfish love. Can love be both selfish and righteous? May I dare command: "Thou shalt serve no other wanderer, oh Road, thou shalt echo my footsteps only, shine your lamps for my two eyes alone?"
Can I hoard this sacred twilight, gather up the hazy purple air as treasure to be counted, stored?
Even as I wonder, the dusk fades into night; my manna melts as it passes its due hour. For a brief fraction of every day, God showers this dusk upon me; he takes it away lest in my greed I store up baskets of worms. I cannot command the evening air, I cannot silence the smallest cicada, hush the faintest buzzing motor from the distant highway. The purple trees do not fade into black against the stars at my bidding, the ochre rime of the sun's passing does not give way to the deep of space at my call.
I have been rebuked, and the rebuttal is just. I have no right to hoard this dusk: I am not alone.
The street ends and I turn and head back up my hill, my back to the purpled shadow of the sun. A blur of motion catches my eye, I look heavenward to see the picturesque silhouette of a bat, swerving wildly to eat his fill. By the time I reach edge of my forested home, the guardian street light has completely filled his hollow in the trees with orange light. Everything is painted in bold black and orange; two dimensions, like a manifesto.
I eat my manna. By the time I reach my door, my daily portion has already melted into night.
