Sunrise

Sunrise
Sunrise on Sunset Beach

Monday, August 31, 2020

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 didshe didshe 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

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