its clothes, turns away like a shy teenager
who has never done this before, letting
a small shrug of warmth slip off a shoulder.
But we know better, the day and I;
we have loved riotously, reveled in prodigality –
pink fairy duster in full show, mallow and white
paper flower explosive in every hollow, while a tolerant
lilac star-flower smiles with its yellow eye –
and we have been left to fade. Day shimmies
out of its lacy skirt of fingering air and cricket
hymn, twitches its fluted hem across the yard,
every sharp edge of gravel a sly wink in the sun.
Faster now, it goes like hope unwound, whirls its seventh scarf
to hone the waiting shadows into baneful darkness; and
stranger night, one jaundiced eye an ember at the edge,
crooks a dark finger and slides across my sill.
Charity Everitt is retired following a career in technical writing and engineering software design and development. Her poems have appeared in Lyrical Iowa, Comstock Review, Concho River Review, Her Words/Black Mountain Press, and River Heron Review among others.
