Poem – Late, The Beauty (By R.T. Castleberry)

I stayed late in the street tonight,

felt the breeze chill come up,

saw the ice sky form, fog-dense.

Shirt tail out, I rock back in my boots,

scan the silhouette corners for

bar room stagger, a skater’s weave.

From a rooftop nest,

long minutes of a heron’s call

are quieted as a diesel Mercedes,

a Fat Boy Harley chop the air.

A rescue siren shivers a seam, miles away.

A fence-framed angle of refracted light

draws me down the sidewalk.

Beside a neighbor’s corner garden

I watch a cat’s claw hunting leap,

the stories-high wash of

wind rippling a palm leaf canopy.

My boot tips skip a beer can,

heels scuff as they

move over grass to crumbling curb.

Hands in my pockets, shoulders up,

I’m staying in the street tonight.

R.T. Castleberry’s work has appeared in Comstock Review, Green Mountains Review, Santa Fe Literary Review, The Alembic, Pacific Review, RiverSedge and Caveat Lector, among other journals. I am a co-founder of the Flying Dutchman Writers Troupe, co-editor/publisher of the poetry magazine Curbside Review, an assistant editor for Lily Poetry Review and Ardent My work has been featured in the anthologies Travois-An Anthology of Texas Poetry, TimeSlice and The Weight of Addition. My chapbook, Arriving At The Riverside, was published by Finishing Line Press in January, 2010. An e-book, Dialogue and Appetite, was published by Right Hand Pointing in May, 2011.