That Afternoon

it was a bare and barren nobody,
that afternoon, wet air and sodden earth the razed umber of a firebird’s hue
trod in by wading footfalls, and the sun
bored through the trees a red and dripping hole
like a gunshot, bruising the sky yellow
and the moist clouds, dragging their crumbling tails,
drew words and features long-condemned to fade
before they were wind-dragged, hair-first, downwards
to meet me like a wild dog coming home

it was a cold bitch of a somebody
that morning, shaking up with its numb head
and its mouth full of ice, thrusting a foot
out of bed touching boards like the first frost
groaning its hangover into the wood
until the trees gave up their threadbare shawls
and hunched like smokers forced out in the rain,
the ground, hard-jawed, ground its teeth, braced for snow
while I pushed out my tongue to catch its fall