Jurassic Dreams and Katydids

There is always a week in early August 

stuck in a musty fold of time, 

when the world spins in place 

and the season teeters on the brink 

as every August that ever was 

seeps in the marrow of a single day. 

I rise in darkness.

Damp air caresses my skin 

as I amble down empty streets listening to crickets.

Furtive songbirds molt in silence. 

A doe slips through the shadows of a streetlamp. 

The moon dissolves in a bank of haze. 

Morning dawns, gray-laden and soft, 

tucked with mushrooms, mold and rot, 

laced with dew-spun webs. 

The sodden hours slip by, dripping, 

yet in the dripping, never dry. But mist 

burns off by noon, and midday glares. 

As sun beats down on bare pavement, 

profane hawks shriek obscenities. 

A gang of crows loiters in the treetops. 

Oblivious gnats hurl their bodies 

at unguarded eyes. The world thrums 

with the jet-beat of cicada days. 

On a primal August such as this 

griffinflies stretched their foot-long wings 

to hunt Carboniferous swamps. 

Red-eyed raptors stalked Jurassic plains, 

and monster crocs lay in wait for Cretaceous prey. 

They ruled their own unchanging days.

The western sky blackens. Cool 

downdrafts shake the canopy. Limbs crack. 

A pack of storms sweeps through. 

Out my open bedroom window 

a sultry evening settles in. Soon, 

I think. Soon enough the season turns.

Soon enough it all moves on. I sleep 

with the distant night-song of dilophosaurus 

enveloped by ancient tree-tip strumming – 

she did – she didn’t 

            she did – she didn’t 

                         she did – she did – she did 

More poems of August:

Coming Home

Weeds Have Names

Awaiting Passage into Fall

August night sounds with katydids and dilophosaurus:

Dilophosaurus chasing Scutellosaurus-By ABelov2014 

(https///abelov2014.deviantart.com/) - 

https///abelov2014.deviantart.com/art/Dilophosaurus-603376947, 

CC BY-SA 3.0

Coming Home

My window fogs as we roll
through puddles and primordial mist
down the endless Atlanta tarmac
to the furthest perch in the terminal.

Our packed cabin disgorges the bleary
to the eternal tide of strangers
ebbing down the concourse,
all drawn toward home.

I lug a week’s worth of laundry,
small soaps and assorted toiletries
across a vast concrete car-scape
to the last long-term lot.

The way out is wide open.
Soon the city lights fade
in my rearview mirror. Silent
lightning paints the blackened horizon

 
like a short-circuiting strobe
as I push east, deep into Georgia.
I steer through sleepy towns.
At the ragged edge of midnight

I skirt a deserted campus
and turn down familiar streets.
A dripping redbud arches low
over my darkened driveway.

I cut the engine and pause
as the rhythmic hymn of katydids
and the rasping peep of tree frogs
wash my travel-wracked body.

I hear the soft call of a barred owl
haunt the high limbs of a dying oak
down by the river. My skin tingles
and the bones of my soul sigh, home.

More poems of August:

Jurassic Dreams and Katydids

Weeds Have Names

Awaiting Passage into Fall