Inside the bright church
you don’t believe
in, flutes and violins
mimic birds 
before dawn.  Outside
 
birds are nesting.
Cicadas have taken
their place.  We
hear their chirps and beeps
throughout the night.
 
Gleaming harpsichord cleans
them up, makes
them musical, blends
them with flute and 
violin’s replica
 
of birdsong.
A cello copies
other bugs’ drones,
sound of August nights, of
windows shut
 
tight against humid
darkness.  At last
we imagine streetlight
through stained glass
as Sunday’s daybreak.

Back then we drove everywhere,
even to Burrito Loco 
atop the steepish hill near home,
the one neither of us would climb.

Shifting sticky gears, you drove
the Gray Ghost up Main Street, dark path
between blotches of aching lights:
places where no one knew your name,

the crowded mall I wandered through
before we met, the tractor plants 
strung out on the south side of town, 
the all-night campus to the west.

I recall one or two people
eating at Burrito Loco 
as we talked over the sizzle
of tongue and onions on the grill.  

I wouldn’t have known their language.
You might have tried out your Spanish,
the way you had in Mexico.
But the men were too tired to speak.  
 
As tiny lights winked out, we ate
our steak burritos, refried beans, 
avocados as dark and soft 
as Saturday nights we clung to.

By next fall we, too, would be gone,
the Gray Ghost, no longer ours, parked
by barren trees on a dark street,
still haunting this town.