dusk.

A hairbrush with red plastic tips,
dissected by a tire, perhaps,
lies splayed upon a patch of ash
from passing finished cigarettes,
an urchin on the asphalt floor
of summer's seething urban sea.

The tired sun casts feeble lines
in glass and steel, but won't disturb
the heavy, humid lethargy
that swims across the city blocks
unmoved as ancient river rocks.

Electric squares from street to street,
replacing fleeing salmon rays,
illuminate red cardboard trays
that scuttle past on lobster feet.

An empty Pepsi can reclines
against the time-uprooted curb,
where verdant mossy thickets sit
between the tired tumbling bricks
and thrive despite the endless tread
of all the stumbling twilight steps
that join the frantic Friday hunt
for cares and Coors in desperate need
of pouring out and capping off,
while passing sirens drag themselves
across the damp, aware of how
their dire, abrasive, anguished howls
are now their own brash eulogies.
They come and go and leave a trail
of staler silence in their place.

The lurking furnace wind resumes
its tour of open-windowed rooms.

The vagrant night will only pause
to glimpse across a windowpane
some mirror image of itself
inside a gilded wooden frame—

It marvels at the captured lights,
enamored with itself, despite
the ever-present scratch of claws
that scurry down its sewer drains.