Fred Maus: The Sky Last Night

.

The sky troubled me, raucous red

and orange, wounded with gray.

Between the sky and me, a hill.

On the left, pine trees along the crest,

sullen, heavy. To the right,

bare branches, like veins on hot flesh.

.

I am not sure why, looking at all that,

I remembered an old friend.

I seldom think of him.

A former friend, I mean.

We were estranged, and also

he died, still young, long ago.

.

When we were close, one night,

drunk, I wanted him to talk to me.

He was upstairs. He didn’t come.

I pounded my fist against hard glass,

one window and another,

ugly din, bruising myself.

.

Two years later, he was much less to me,

but still, I dreamed I was off-course

in the basement stench of a rambling

discarded house, and I was

dazed, vertiginous. I needed him.

Sooty rooms echoed

.

as I called him again and again.

I woke up still hearing his name.

—

copyright 2015 Fred Maus