Shouting At Nothing

The difference between what happens
and what doesn’t is us.
We are where all ideas make their contact
with the early Winter rain.
There is a chain hanging over the fence
of the junkyard and it is working
like a wind chime unintended
by whoever tossed it over
in the first place.
I stand still further back and listen
for the links to make their sounds
like tiny diamonds in the landslide
of the constant freezing gusts.
Under the overpass where one highway
curves into another she unlocks
her precious pendant and stares
back at what she looked like as a child.
Taming the wild is a never ending war
that rots the core of both sides hiding
in their trenches while they’re flooded
by the cries of distant skies.
We are ready for tomorrow to be different
and these old paths to be misplaced
while the whole game is being broken
at the places where its rules bolt it together.
There is a place where friends are better,
and the talk is all important, and the cigarettes
couldn’t kill you if they tried.
A kind of moon where it is bright
on every single side and space
is just a highway to the next place
people dream about and shout
at all the nothing in the way.