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Summer Evening
The twilit sky is calm blue
Deeper by the moment
And the distant treeline black
Two-dimensional
Like a carbon etching.
A tree frog ratchets loud and clear
and cicadas, in choral echoes
Answer three notes to one.
A neighbor switches on the light in the back outbuilding
And stands a shovel and a rake against the whitelit wall
He disappears behind the cedars and
I hear the gate click closed and his tired footfalls on the deck stairs.
Beneath the streetlamp the summerlush branches
Are still as a painting
Now a firefly rises and flashes
Like a spark from a fire.
Copyright 2015