An afternoon nap might have made it more likely that I'd be able to stay awake long enough tonight to see what the Perseid shower brings. But it's too late for napping now. I must fix dinner, and there's an important phone call to be made, and then the laundry isn't done yet and I'll need those clothes tomorrow. The sky is so simple compared to all of the world's busyness. The sun's glare brightens my drapes and puts me on edge. I envy those places where it is midnight now. I could be asleep by the time it's midnight here.
Sunday Verse
Suburban Lovers
by Bruce Dawe
Every morning they hold hands
on the fleet diesel that interprets them
like music on a roller-piano as they move
over the rhythmic rails. Her thoughts lie
kitten-curled in his while the slats of living
racket past them, back-yards greying
with knowledge, embankments blazoned
with pig-face whose hardihood
be theirs, mantling with pugnacious flowers
stratas of clay, blank sandstone, sustaining them
against years' seepage, rain's intolerance.
Each evening they cross the line
while the boom-gate's slender arms constrain
the lines of waiting cars.
Stars now have flown up out of the east.
They halt at her gate. Next-door's children
scatter past, laughing. They smile. The moon,
calm as a seashore, raises its pale face.
Their hands dance in the breeze blowing
from a hundred perfumed gardens. On the cliff of kissing
they know this stillness come down upon them like a cone.
All day it has been suspended there, above their heads.