Leaving City Limits

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Leaving City Limits


On the special occasion that the words fit

right, and amber light cloaks the elm


the way a wedding dress becomes

a kind of second skin; when August thins


to September and the dew-point loosens 

its corset till it’s possible to believe


in breath again, with all the deep that it might 

make; when, without a doubt, the words 


fit so unbelievably right as to invite more 

than our knees to quake, as if time shuffled 


its feet and the callused heel of the world 

snagged a loose thread in the tapestry 


to show eternity’s stitch, a sparrow cloud

curving like a comma on the evening’s page, brief 


inhalation to prepare for what comes next— 

it’s less the bump of pulling in, quiet 


click of arrival as the motor stills, 

and more the soft tread of footsteps  


on a road again, that two-way blessing  

of a horizon with a suggestive curve 


we can make towards but isn’t yet

                                ours to touch.         

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