Dusk Doggerel

When Brantley isn't horsing around with auntie or Uncle 

he likes to stand at the kitchen window and look out at the world.

            Tonight after supper as he stood there I wondered if he wondered where his world went...

Now trundles through the countryside

A drifter known as Eventide

His coat is velvet dark-blue-dyed

Soft, soft his footsteps fall

And in the ebbing light of day

While vesper’s benedictions play

Croft and hillside slip, slip away

Beneath a shapeless shawl

And all that we have left to see

Of this small day that used to be

Are memories of you and me

No drifter can rescind

He wanders up and down the street

Across bare fields once bronze with wheat

I hear him whistle, low and sweet

Or is it just the wind

He climbs time’s seasoned belvederes

And flings the coat he’s worn for years

Across a world that disappears

In windows framing black

Save ribbons trailing purple-pink

Along the paling tree-lined brink

He waves his farewell wand, I think

With starry bric-a-brac

© Janet Martin