Night Sights

Bagan of Bagan ~ Patrick Arrasmith

Under deadened leaves and clockwork eaves
With janitorial duties done
Concerning childhood dreams and playground screams
And trips around the sun
Behind the rusted gates of long dead estates
Where foxes feral run
The dusted grass has grown green to pass
The sights of hunters’ guns

Now shadows loom and lunge too soon
To catch the passing light
Their fingers clasp but fail to grasp
The goal that’s in their sight
Beyond the realms of rotted elms
And colonies in flight
For who would rue the targets true
That glow in emerald night

These beating sticks; these politics
Are euphemisms for lying
scientific death and faith-based breath
And novel ways of dying
With nothing left in the niche that’s cleft
In the corners where we’re crying
But seeds of hope and miles of rope
On which to hang our sighing

Beneath the hangman’s sleeves where deadened leaves
Rustle on nature relying
There am I recycled and my future self entitled
To another aeon trying