After Hours
We were searching for
ourselves, after logic
for no good reason,
jumping fires to take
the heat for walking,
wishing the blue night
not to fall into the blue
sky and darken what
remained. We were
holding on to music,
playing the solemn
string the healing horn,
rolling back the meadow
to give innocence one
more tumble, waiting
for the breeze to send
the screen door slamming
open. We were rushing
with the sea of people
tiding over curb and
sidewalk, twilight running
out of light, a city pacing
its expansion into the sky,
block by block, new
views burying the old,
thinking not thinking
about the dead. We were
who we never thought
we’d be, at the corner
of expectation and desire,
the world kind and un-
kind, the rabbits scared
the palace in ruins,
language failing the earth
in transition, the infinite
sky divided the clouds
dispersing premonitions.
Come evening come
shade, float us to your
constellation, let the void
draw us still; the radiologist
turn off her light and go.
Copyright © 2017 by Howard Altmann. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 23, 2017, by the Academy of American Poets.