Nocturne for Mills

Newark. 1957
The street gave birth to Mills
during a palette of chemical green sunsets

He was older, we were from different tribes
When we would play, he would swing me toward heaven
As children, we pointed to plumes of light,
pink cotton candy clouds, stacks of chimneys
crackling with fireflies, fiery, otherworldly

He was Esau
he went away

We’ve been awhile, Newark and I
Outlasting the car-jacks
When some thought
Between ceaseless sigh for answers
the dun, riot strewn brick walls seemed to provide
Now silent, oblong blocks
of universe, they are the atomic dust
of time’s low-throated hiss,

Locomotive plays trumpet in the distance
gargantuan a-rumbling in the Jersey dusk
to a child’s rebuilt robot, some factory
gone on the westward sky

out of nowhere, shadows
of muslin curtains, one window,
another, the entire Warren Harding
era neighborhood
moonlit, billowing
ghost of kings returning
Dream-weft, everything left – in proximity tonight
Though longing sleep, I feel
his footstep outside the camp.