A planet of black soil and bulging worms

scorched brown by sunlight

in the places where I picnic

alone, on a floating blanket.

Veils of steam girdle

mysterious dancing bodies,

in the parking lots

abandoned by motionless man

magnetized to granite homes

by a force-field's ban.

I am beamed down to observe

so little, in these hours stripped free

of all activity.  The windows teem

with ghosts of what went past

before the moments paralyzed at last

the cream of some frothing moon

brought deeper dreams to make us wander.

Now I walk the hourglass stained

by a kaleidoscopic garage,

by a light-burning engine and

a frail empire, flipping through

books of birds.  The guardrails

of empty roads are swaddled

in hair passionately left behind

by the wide-eyed staring blind

from a storm of trinkets that drank

their ragged veins and left me

pulsing in the outskirts with a stone tongue

and brambles in spheres to carry.