DUSK

​

Sure as silt, every bulb is crowded
by desperate gnats. The yellow house, its pillars,

darkened. A cricket. Two crickets. A plastic bear

and her plastic cub, frozen on a front lawn
in fruitless travel. In the grass
there’s a red leaf which I realize
is a cardinal, then realize is a red leaf,
again. A stranger’s slinging string lights
from the shingles across the street.
The pickup trucks, under late sunlight,
glint like kitchen knives. Look,
how everything is ruined now
because you might have loved it
and cannot.