And it’s not like these tree branches are anything
more than a hundred swinging arms,
humming May’s lulling noontime melody.

But back then the sky was water and the sun a goldfish,
all murky and glistening like a sweating diamond
while summer licked our cheeks in teasing winks
and we filled our minds with bras, books,
and other such instruments of hangovers.
Yes, the days were velvet and we were golden,
all things necessary in their lovely chaos.

Now, as the future rises over the boulevards
in that inevitable promise of twilight, unfolding,
we’re left wading in a sea of catastrophic possibility.
And with pen and reply we’re hogtied to reality,
left to examine a crumbling, drunken realization
that the freedom we once imagined, tanned in abandonment,
was a spoon bending towards yesterday, lost,
and we were only, always, spinning towards a fork in the horizon.