After Evening

Wiping sweat from the proverbial brow

or the toiled face not cooled by frost,

even ice in an unexpected seasonal shift,

we take each day as it comes – no more

or less than this – but somehow such things

have to be blamed on someone no matter

how much the storytelling takes over from

reality and the sheer simplicity in our lives.

So come the long day’s end into evening,

then poets are philosophers and preachers

punishing us with their deeper meanings

after the memories of their innocence.

It is in picking within such day-ends so deep

that searching sends the searchers to sleep.