Distraction

1.

An evening perched on the scent of jasmine,

perched like a wounded bird shaking nostalgia

from its wings.

I am not here to welcome the evening

but to watch it closely

as I do every day in September.

I yearn for it

and in it find my soul,

perched on the scent of jasmine.

Melancholy evening

in which something flows gently,

flows deep.

Is it yearning?

An irrepressible yearning for all things,

as if I see everything slipping away from me,

as I sit before this evening.

I feel something leave me

yet remain at a distance watching.

Is it poetry?

A spirit that flows deep

and rises effortlessly

to flicker like the passing sky.

Disconsolate evening,

am I not here to embrace it?

To see myself rise little by little into it

and drown in the scent of jasmine.

2.

Autumn looms

in the fragrance of September.

Distracted, I am only here this evening

waiting for the wind to scatter me,

waiting for tender extinction.

Does this hypnotic evening know

that when I lose myself to it

I see my soul settle into the incantation of sunset?

I watch it befriend small terrors,

like the wings of fog.

Autumn looms.

September is a gasp of fragrance.

And I am here only in my evening distraction

to exult myself,

to witness it passing like the sky,

tipping the weight of existence,

to find solace within extinction.

(9/10/1993)