Rio Grande

Irreparably, autumn deposits itself onto the last days of summer,
ombre strands still flying
stubbornly, unevenly.
Inseparably.
Tinged with the imminence of next summer,
overwashed neon letters peel
and hang ungracefully,
yet refulgent,
from see-through tops.
Shorts, tighter now, look seat-worn,
even up against the distance of a cloudless,
color-blocked blue sky.
Two tiny girls walk hand-in-hand down Rio Grande,
free palms pressed with broken shells,
blonde tendrils knotted and darkened with sandy grit.
Their parents stumble in dusty drunkenness
behind them,
tobacco-stained fingers and teeth pitted in rage and defeat;
the unworthy are always gifted with such enormity.
Stories like these are grains of sand, a dime a dozen,
magnified by the coming cold.
One ear pressed to the boardwalk –
because the shells are empty now –
hammer-bent nails split our blotchy cheeks,
skin weathered and colored like the splintered boards themselves,
we listen
as it all bullies through –
the bicycle bells,
the thumping joggers,
the short order cooks shouting above each other in Greek,
and Luigi pounding his umbrella into the sand beneath the pier.
Above the low spray of the hose firmly speckling the air,
but never masking the smell of garbage underfoot,
or the beachcomber gliding by the water,
always leaving bits of wrappers and half-smoked cigarettes,
we listen.
Over the voices of those who say ‘awn’ for ‘on’
while pointing up at tired dotted black birds barely flying south,
the stingy economy of fate and empty karma unravel blamelessly,
while we rubberneck,
and listen.
Its genius comes in sleep and leaves when eyes are opened,
so we are unable to break our gaze at the ruthless intrusion of its truth into frivolity,
or summer
into fall.