The Shank of the Day
- by Linn Barnes
The Shank of the Day
-Linn Barnes
At the shank of the day,
with the sun burning down,
with the winds standing dead still,
with the measure of time suspended
in the vast furnace of late summer, where
even the crows are quiet and the vultures don't fly.
Now, even music loses the drive to be
heard and the strings protest
the hands of the player,
wilted and dripping,
unwilling to add even one more
measure to this late summer mix.
And while it is not exactly sadness,
but rather a portrait of soggy melancholy
which, troubling as it may be,
rattles not the hidden hive of the heart,
while we sit motionless beneath a dying oak
and watch the leaves begin to fall unchallenged
to the waiting and bone dry earth below.