Early To Be Late

It’s early, yet the day’s dwindling into pieces.

Night came fast, sucked

all the light from flowers

in the park.

Green is gone for now.

These sidewalks are straight as Kansas,

misspelled ancestors’ names scrawled

in Swedish, Chippewa and Croatian.

As the slivered moon escapes its lair,

I can’t stop thinking of her, her thick

brown hair.

Even gas stations won’t take this pocket 

of counterfeit coins under acres of neon glare.

Parking the tired car with its empty tank 

on a silent street, I re-tie my shoe laces

and set out into darkness, dank as a steam bath.

A drizzle turns to rain descending,

holy water of a foreign home, 
black and cold, from unforgiving sky,

this dome, deaf and blind 
to all I've been afraid to ask.