Don't Tell Me What I Can't Do
Skitters of a dozen green branches, the Florida breeze rattles in my dozing ears. So as the sun goes down we are a tiny city of a few thousand porch-sitters, slowly lifting our cans of beer, slowly watching the time slip through our fingers. By the thousands, we finish what we opened; all at once we turn the doorknobs to our apartments, slide under the covers, and fall asleep.
And I dream of the trees wavering in the half-darkness of the just-set sun, and I am surrounded by the sounds of the wind as it kneels down into the treetops, as it lifts up a flock of sparrows, black against the darkening sky. So in a changing shape they distort themselves and spread apart as they disappear; as the sky darkens, as they dissolve themselves to nothing.
And I dream of the trees wavering in the half-darkness of the just-set sun, and I am surrounded by the sounds of the wind as it kneels down into the treetops, as it lifts up a flock of sparrows, black against the darkening sky. So in a changing shape they distort themselves and spread apart as they disappear; as the sky darkens, as they dissolve themselves to nothing.