Rite Time

An ice cream truck near the end of September
conceivably draws out summer, yet will only
pack it away. The town swimming pool is drained
and sunflowers disparately hover - huge and bent.

Attenuation and extension mildly meet
in a public convalescence of old heat.
The canned ragtime puttering down streets
has megaphone rust in it, tintinnabulating

on repeat. Between the mealtime trees
in the crucible light, a flying messenger
severely hushes the asphalt whenever
some kid is learning the trumpet.

Morning glory in the chain link
is a wind-struck party field, in all directions
a scattered array of white pavilions.
A shirtless man with a gut on a corner

is trying to start a go-cart. Shoulders of the roads
have a new surety of bone, violet marrow.
Leaves lying in a bird bath are no
impediment - nor the the seed-spent

fence-impinging grass - to this cleaning
rite of the new. A spider waits in every gap
and pavement cools with a sky's semblance.
A skein of honks descends on us like hats.