The Evening Opens

Old streetlamps at San Jose History Park. 

There was a mystery to that childhood time when 

lamps were just coming on with that faint orangey glow. 

I had to quit rollerskating and go home then, for sure.

Streetlamps

Streetlamps release an ivory light like sweet magnolias
Along the humid elms already the odor of autumn,
of expendability.
The leaves flutter like unsold tickets.

The evening opens, 
dragging you along, farther from earth
as far as your eyes will take you.
Telescopes aim and the sky fills
with sight like a spidery shadow.

Tonight
in the air that twirls toward the nostril like a winged seed,
to some, happiness is a defect.
A fat man sits alone gulping ice cream.

What does it matter
which night this is? Or which, among all of us alive
I am.

Each day puts its arms around you,
each terrain with its infallible time-sense.
Ears, fingers, mouth. Everything that enters
splitting like light in a prism.

Roo Borson

A Sad Device, Quadrant Editions, Ontario, Canada, page 20.

As I have said before, the work of Roo Borson pleases me very much. I was just able to get a copy of another old title of hers. I picked out this poem to use tonight earlier today. When I went to type it, I saw that the bookmark has obscured that the poem was not over at the bottom of page 20, but continued for two and a half more pages. Too much to type. So I spent another hour looking for something else. In the end, I came back to this, because I like it so much. Everything doesn't always work out according to plan. . .