After the Parade

Dear friend,

After the parade passed through—

—with streaming banners wrought

in rainbow ramparts swimming—

—after the band’s music pulsed

in eddies against the current

as it streamed down the street—

—after the parade called down

the waxing moon

from its cloth and roped

its glimmers to the streetlights

as the afternoon faded into dusk—

I stood there, at my window, watching

through the branches of trees parched

in the June sun, imagining the frosty breath

of autumn in the steam rising

from the dew—

—watching the processions pass,

and pass, and disappear

around the bend, into the murky deep

patterned in pied smog

against the horizon’s edge—

—listening as the marching band,

the techno beat that was

the city’s pulse,

ebbed in its diminuendo, and broke

against the jagged rocks

of silence

in the summer night.

And I listened, for the crickets

and cicadas, as they took their turn,

turned my eyes from the empty street and watched

through the branches, summer-stained—

—through the tree beyond my window—

—watched the stars fall dim through the blear

of streetlights. Watched the shadows shift

behind the curtained firmament

in its twirl.

What were the hands there that

sat in languid roots

at the passing of

the melody that pulsed?

What were the eyes that caught the rainbow

in its arc, but could not fly it past

tomorrow’s sky?

What was the voice there that did lie

in snow, billowing through the winter’s rasp

as the chorales paraded by

in their summer splendor?

Here the hands reach upwards towards the stars.

Here the eyes trace wanton constellations

forged

in streetlight’s crucible—here

the voice, in counterpoint to night

and her softer fugue, will hum

with cricket and cicada, until

the stars erupt new rainbows

from their mouths, that burst

through dusk and dawn,

alike—

—and here these feet

in silence walk me

through the night

in solitude

to follow that parade

at my own pace

and offer rainbows

to a distant star

that lonely feet

may, in winter,

find

and tread

beneath.

Sincerely,

A sleepwalker