i take these walks to work
between the divided
evergreens each sunday
like prescription,
ninety minutes of dark
before someone out east
must be inventing dawn.
a cool exhale, a humble flashlight
faced forward, dissuading death
by rare passing truck,
who at this secret hour i liken
to a stray wildebeest
galloping after its pack
of saturday nighters
or a canary singing, warning
of the morning commuters
slouching past the horizon.
all that rummaging around
for a spare thought,
all that useless beckoning
at the tide of dark
to spare my cruel imagination.
oh, void of night in the thicket
to my left and right,
oh, all that nurtures
the child’s habit of carving death
into the world just out of sight,
let me be spared.
i pretend i am not the kid in me
until a rooster cries from a farmhouse
hidden behind a line of birches
to which every muscle of mine tenses
and i must levitate,
i must.
from what i know of this earth,
we are most ourselves
in the dark.
the trees no longer rustle,
nor does a spirit call in wild taunt.
all this rummaging around
and yet the tide turns
so little. it’s true: i take these walks
for granted.
Basil James graduated from SFASU with a BFA in Creative Writing, and an MA in English at Texas Tech University. Their work has appeared in HUMID, Apeiron Review, ellipsis… literature and art and mutiny! magazine. They also contribute as a poetry editor to Chaotic Merge Magazine.