Sensibility belongs to highway waterfalls

in ever-growing infrastructures

that come and go on the last big rain.

It belongs to roadside cinnamon trees

beneath a wild and waning sun.

The world, she says, is beautiful while it lasts.

Courage drips down with morning coffee.

It floats there uninvited, like petals in a pool

only to be caught and filtered ‘till the next big rain.

She taps her glass as if to say

the world is beautiful while it lasts

beneath our wild and waning sun.

Count familiar artifacts from the summer of walking.

Cherry cigars, tasteless beer, men calling out for a drink.

We found our courage, incomplete, like single shoes along the road

in the summer of walking between school and home.

Here then gone like bad beer and good men.

Who washed away with the last big rain.

She said, even then, that sadness came

on cannonball ripples.

We’re homesick for days long past

when no such thing existed

As transplant trees and roadside rapids,

burning now beneath our wild and waning sun.

We’re just another casualty of the forced affair

between timelessness and time.

There will be no summer like the last.

Let’s drink, she says –

To the edge of the universe.

There will be no champagne like the last.