The days grow shorter in December, wet
and gray. Labor diminishes, as if toil
followed the light to a different part of earth.
a circus horse in summer rests in the barn,
grows hair again where the straps have brushed
and condensed it, and flips it’s unsheared mane
like a teenager when I come to greet it.
My neighbor celebrates each evening with a shot
of espresso earlier and earlier, but says it fails
to give the kick of drinking it in summer.
The word itself, “expresso” he says, it stretches
your mouth like a night in July.
                        

Amid the shirr of waitpersons swift between tables,
clack of plates and clink of silverware,
all the stacking, sorting, sweating to deliver,
amid the flaccid conversations of gossip and the intense
manifestos on war, taxes, drought, sports and apocalypse, 
the occupants tipping chairs forward to be heard
and sidewalk buzzing with chatter from passersby,
a trolley and cars and bicyclists whirring by,
one old man stopped, admired the single red dahlia 
in a slim vase dangling over salt and pepper.