Under an urbane sunlight

Midafternoon. The sunlight’s hard.

Intractable. Like raised placards
in the hands of silent citizens
pushed beyond frontiers of words,

 

far beyond bafflement and ken.

Exhausted men and women,
clock hands, numb bells, boulevards
ringed into rallies. Some broken,

 

bent contrails, spent smoke, and yards

of straight gun barrels and guards
and this hard smiling sunlight, fallen
on random faces, slogans, and hazards.

.

I’ll paint you a picture - easy dozen

birds to a cloud, speckled, sullen,
twisting in the sky, tugged homeward
under an urbane sunlight. And omens.