A Leaf Falling From a Treeless Sky

Cross yourself.  The day is solid blue—
your body feeling all wrong
and there’s nothing you can do about it.
It’s Thursday, then it’s Tuesday,
sure the night has a reputation for being deep,
sure anything is possible—
like a single blossom drifting
into the open palm of a person sleeping
on a couch, waking him or her,
so he or she rises, walks outdoors to witness
the sidewalk being carpeted with fuchsia
bougainvillea, sensing the city and what’s
inside the city, while a sudden fog 
draws slowly over the buildings,
the Spanish tiled rooftops, billowing
around the slim ankles of some woman
running past at just that moment, who will
look hard into the eyes of the waking stranger,
each of them pausing long enough
for several blooms to gather like swelling halos
in their hair, as they both suddenly remember
how once, independent of each other,
and on different continents, they watched
as a dark ribbon of swallows poured through
somebody’s barn door, the moment
before the hay inside caught fire,
burning everything to the ground.

— Holaday Mason