at end of August

at end of August

The final week of August sighs 

and summer slips into a coma, soft 

and slow as infant dreams. 

      The left-hand turn

on Main St. pulls a vagabonding leaf 

across my hood, with Herculean effort 

clinging to the dew-slick morning metal 

to avoid a second fall. 

          Mailbox children work 

their backpacks tight and try to tell themselves

that seventh grade is good, and try to tell 

themselves that growing up is good, and cram

their apple air-pods deep to somehow quell 

the siren song of childhood.
How strange,
how lovely, when heartstrings stretch while days 

compress to pocket-fulls of sunlight, when all 

the air is cloaked by the love-sick haze  

of what can only be said by the Miles Davis solo 

now seeping through my front-right speaker.