Ceased (his empty sky)

Send us Fan MailHis empty sky Listening to the last of summer birds call, across the distance, the fading rush of the evening homeward drive, the hurryof life times, dulled in the midsummer heat, trapped in metal and glass, immune from the skyline, the sinking splendor of a declining sun, for here only silence grows, thick, as the cicadas regular staccato, tick and hum, tick and hum, the air trembles, heavy with perfume, a crow barks overhead, a motorcycle grumbles into the last dusk of evening darkness, a last blackbird, fusses in the hedges, for tonight’s the night, the last of his days, there’s laughter from the neighbours, glasses empty and refilled, the smoke and tease of barbecue, fills the heady air, stories told, egos lost, and found, and found again, misfortunes and successes mingle in the afterglow an afterglow that suffuses the rim of the forests, steeped in heat and silence, a distant plane arrows across the naked sky, a great scratch of orange upon the last eternal, the enamel of blue, the conversation, like waves, lulled into bells and silence, a distant church chimes the last, the lengthening hour, and then a cry, a shriek, a dropping of glasses, a silence rushes,thickly into the gap of disbelief, one moment to the next: all is sudden, shattered and still. A body has slipped from life, still and warm to the stone hardheat and floor.and above, just a glimpse, a crease, a hint upon the highest line of hills, the moon lifts blindly, an eye upturned, to the first stars of an empty [email protected]