Of Dates and Fossils, Dinners and Meadows
Avuncular guards at every door,
long-winded speeches highlighting
large-breasted, small-waisted heroines –
paper cutouts
for each occasion.
Bouncers exit from a nearby bar.
Patrons gambol on a trampoline.
Friends that never come round anymore.
Long walks, long monologues,
adjudicating the very old,
dates on tombstones,
fossils at the beach.
Streets winding towards nowhere,
cursive markings on a curb.
A cape draped over a nobody's shoulder,
bright colored bunting on a bannister.
Testimonial dinner
for having lived so well,
a tentative distaste,
a far off stare.
Untrammeled high-mountain meadows edged with need.
Unzipped fly, dirty fingernails ill met.
Jackal,
lion,
hyena
comport themselves
in dreamy, after-the-fact grasses,
in residual nightmares.
• Frank Praeger lives in Houghton, MI