[roses, power lines, the growing cenotaphs of summer green]

Purple clouds at 4 a.m., 5 a.m., 6—and the bedroom is aglow, the walls and floor made out of waking eyes, only just, only one adjusted slat of plastic blinds to see the purple clouds, adjusting blue-socked feet through rooms untouched by those clouds, black bathroom, hallway, kitchen, flicked-on light and quick across the measure of the glass door’s frame is purple, across being away, north by northwest, or northwest by west, that a rose compass somehow might be seen by this light, somehow answers How long has there been sleep? the sleep ratcheted by clocks in retrograde, the hour gained sees shadows rooted in the thickness of thickets, even as purple capitulates to blue, the blue moved over oak leaves exposing grackles in the trees, as if their palaver like a hundred grinding brakes was not enough to turn your ear, the blue gaining, blue silence broken by a single plane, blue minutes when no car has turned the corner, none bathed in blue and barreling downhill, always some place to go, to continue living or move towards death, the light still and not still, is, continues transforming, finds in light an alchemy of fragments, fines the dankness of damp leaves, files the dampened clawing interstate in air, and the blue, the blue reintroduces the city, the clock, its retrograde, the alchemy’s incessant grip, to roses, power lines, the growing cenotaphs of summer green.