By: Lana Bella

A fresco of fireflies bled sepia,
mapped the night’s ration
of willows suffering the rapids,
threatening from some dusk,
implacable shifts. Broke like
leaves, runnel of years preyed
on by the sparks of dandelions,
breathing antres, seeping side-
wards with the still heat of June.
Now, the pinstriped nightjars
whittled back to hollow curves
of stoke in dark rummage, dense
with spirograph of ululations
and blind slithers along the low
smoky hold. Something closer
to silence as if this century, too,
will pass, what cast obliteration
licked back toward precipice, into
the night with clovers for nest.