Greenspring Dark

Originally posted on 2/23/2011.

In the greenspring dark,
your foot finds a rock.
You trip and fall
as the neighbor’s daughter

skips down the far sidewalk.
Lying hurt on your belly,
you can’t get yourself up
to get inside, so you stay down.

You stay
while the grass
under the moon
swallows you.

Her mother calls her in
for the night and you’re alone.
Ah well. It’s warm out here
under the moon in the grass.

There’s a fence fifteen feet away.
Something moves along its base.
Possum or skunk, no telling.
No scent carries to you,

so something else perhaps. 
It stays away.
Maybe it smells the stink
of your draining health.

It’s getting cold out here
under the moon.  You’re on your belly,
you’re cold, you’re hurt — it’s fine. 
Under the greenspring dark,

it’s not hard to consider
ending here
among animals
who will eventually draw near to you

as at last you drift away.  By day
it’ll be so easy for the neighbors
to see you there, dead
on your belly,

never knowing that your last thought
was a memory
of their skipping child
in the lowering greenspring dark.