Michael A. Pogachar

Fall Dusk

Gunshot ricochet.

Swanlike sunset sweeps grace into lake.

Abandoned coal, orphaned steel, aborted automobiles…

Hey dew dreamy, neighborhood stars say

Night, Other forms of life wait –

Whisper whisper goes the breeze

And you, hundreds away,

The miles in hundreds, my heart in hundreds, a prayer

Agnostic, Zildjian lightning walks you home

     -I need to go, the phone-

Stories unfinished, heart too full,

Ear warm from your words, phone warm from ear, somnambulist

Solitary, here’s my Stanford Avenue, my home –

“my” “home,” stagnant growth

Parents how was your walk?

Beautiful night, feels like spring

in the city touched by fate, the hope within violence,

in which the born do not live but return

to find land zoned, gravestone shadowed, cinch

of crime and seagull crap on Lakeview, rust burns

on children’s slides, volleyball nets amputated –

the city she asked about,

she’ll be “home” for the “holidays,”

and I told her it wasn’t raining here,

I told her the breeze blew waves that kissed sand

I told her the lighthouse blinked its radius, continuous

I told her the 24-7 remains 24-7

I told her they lowered the price on our former high school

I told her a baby was found soaked in urine in her childhood garage

I told her my neighbors are the same, good and old

I told her a sofa-sized pothole killed my tire

I told her the sun pushed the neighborhood stars away this morning

I told her I started a new book and ate dinner and held my niece

and I was about to tell her all that, everything, and more

when bass drum thunder floored conversation

because we did not know about electrocution,

so I held the words,

now a horizon of police sirens,

and hold them, and hold them.