Immeasurably Different

The craters of the moon collapse in a crestfallen crescendo.
Brittle light shining upon the dried-up, skeletal beechwood trees
cast an uncanny  reflection of the heavens,
illuminating my lonely face a paler shade of pale,
a ghostly, chalky alabaster tombstone white.
It makes its mark by betraying everything it touches.

The shadow of the moon… it’s no better.

And still you whoop and holler, like you won the lotto.

The Dodgers were knocked out of the playoffs.
A sewer line broke in the street the other day.
Water flowed everywhere, like a river.

The currents brought me to her river bank.
She said her name wasn’t important
and for an evening I believed her.
We dined on lobster and other animals
of the sea… the night treating us less
cruelly than it should have.

The wine sits in a glass with a W on the outside.
The grape was crushed in 2005,
when time was measured differently.
And I was measured differently.
She said I drank too much and she was right.

A solitary sea crab stuck to the hull of the ship
makes its way across the bay and lets go with a slip,
lands near the pier where the surfers hang around
and buries itself in the soft sand, into the ocean ground.

Inside its shell it will live out the rest of its days.
You and I held hands while we listened to the waves.

It was 2005 and the year before was 1993.
The only difference between now and then
is I buy soy candles now. I only mention it since
humans have a need to measure these things.

They want meaning for the tick,
and religion for the tock.
Or else time doesn’t mean a thing.
Needy things we are…
Needing meaning.
Needing religion.

But where I live it’s all goddamn dandelion gossamer.