Into Day

(in memory of Raymond Chandler)

Feet slithered by on the pavement
outside my window.
There was a murmur and mutter
of coming and going in the air.
As it grew darker.

I thought. (And thought in my mind moved with
a kind of sluggish stealthiness, as if
it were being watched by bitter and sadistic eyes.)
I thought of dead eyes
staring at a moonless sky,
with black blood at the corners
of the mouths silent beneath them.
I thought of many things as it grew darker.

I looked out at the lights.
The scattered points drew together
to become a jeweled bracelet
in the show window of the night.
Small bright eyes glutted with an urchin greed.
Then the brightness faded
and they were a soft orange glow
appearing and disappearing
through the swell of the waves.
The sparkle had gone.
And a seagull with a broken trailing leg
was twisting against the offshore breeze.

Then there was loneliness
and the smell of the city,
where an amber window hung here and there
like the last orange.
Cars passed,
spraying the pavement with cold white light
before growling off into darkness again.
Wisps of fog chased the stars down the sky,
and the air was wet and cold as the ashes of love.

I stopped thinking.
Lights moved behind my closed lids.
I was lost in space.
I was a guilt edged hero.
Returning from a vain mission.
I was asleep.

A voice told me all about time.