In the final day of summer,
find the clockwork tooth
that shreds the fat pulp
of the hours, find the bones
stained white under pine needles.
Find the old desires, bottled,
labeled and covered
in a good thick cloud of dust.

There are fat spiders in the trees,
eyes to catch the streetlights.
The rain comes precisely through
the roof into a chipped yellow pot
that held a fine soup of ham and mice.  

Stir it with a wooden spoon.
In the downspouts are nests of hair
where the last pink babes crawl
like bad ideas, a dream
of spontaneous generation,
the mussels growing into geese,
angels arising in the curdled stars
like flies in old milk.  

Here is a fistful of rotten paper
and a small life crawling in it,
blind and sticky in my guts.
The leaves spit dye in the crevices
of the oaks, bleach to paper bag brown.
 
Everything fills its hoard for the cold season.
The toads sleep in the stones
waiting for a cutter's tool.
The fish swim lazily through the skies
that tinge with red over the factories.
 
The autumn railroad's orange and yellow
cars pull wearily through the hills.  
Here is the final carnival,
the children sick with sugar,
spinning and spinning in a whirl of light.
 
The railyards empty, the houses
closing up to a shuttered blue glow.
In the hills tonight, girls will strip drunk
and lower themselves
into baptismal pools, the air cold,
the stars new knives.
 
Say I am here with a backpack filled
with useless necessities,
smelling wood smoke in the air
and standing at a place where two roads
cross. You are here with me, as you were
with me every day before we met,
your possibility
a punch line to my joke.

You never left me until
we found each other
and even then it was I who dragged
my bag through the streets of Brooklyn
until the cuffs of all my jackets were stained.
But this is not that story.
Not yet.

Say I have a burned-down house
in my back pocket, every room of it,
and a song in my throat I have never sang
to anyone but you, and only when you slept.
Still, I tell you nothing.
 
Let there be no more stage drops
wheeled into place merciless as clockwork,
let there be a few honest words,
the last left in the bottle.
You are beautiful as I have never succeeded
in describing to you, in the shape of lack you carve
we are perfect compliments to each other.

Here I am the grey wolf dog
your father killed, the conspirator
and brother and assassin you required,
here for me you are a font of some gentleness,
whole and loved and without despair.

Before the collision you are waiting for me
in some terrible room like a death,
and I approach you as a storm,
as a fire, as an animal left unfed in an empty place.
You do yet not know
what terrible joys I have in my hands.

Perhaps I am a scarecrow, hanging in un-life
'til you come traipsing down the road,
the crows wheeling indifferent above me,
the grain growing as it always does in blood.  
A golden road cuts through everything,
you, pretty in your red shoes,
come trip-trapping down it,
what else can I do but dance?

Jacob Rakovan is a resident of Rochester, New York.

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Keywords : urban fable, love

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