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Hat of August |
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| We have trimmed the night to the size of a wick,
my uncle and I, on the patio where he walks. We rise, or some part of us: bits of the rendered stuff changed to light. He flips cigar ash at the carving of a snake, a two-dimensional back the sculptor wrapped into a pile, tight as a mountain road, until he broached its arrow face. |
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And all of what we've been rising toward forgets its inducements, stars, corks and sherbet- whatever we've skinned our dark horizons to. |
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" . . . But what have I been saying?" my uncle asks. These end-of-summer
ravelings, birds and such out of work, prompt us to bay at the moon, old dogs too tired to finish supper. |
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But the hat of my uncle is truly magnificent, sombre in its wings, and apt to peer at me with his face when held as now against the night. He holds it from him, mouth up, as though it were possible that anything might gutter and drop. |
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| He is moving from me, toward the edge, and the bald head once contained barely gleams now, dull as our clean platters. |
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