LOIS MOYLES
DECENT FORMALITY
Remember the old daredevil-dominated days
when, at dawn the flag was run up
to its gold ball, and
the eagle could come when he chose,
if at all?
Remember how taped-up bells when tapped
gave no a larm,
and the rains were a llowed to fall
several sizes at once.
And a ll the while we watched
like very candid wolves,
for them to come -
the overhead engines ripening out of reach,
the flyers falling informally,
like loosened legs from the sky,
some with chutes, some without.
But waiting was a worse ailment than accident,
a kind of cloud of cinder
that hindered the heart's silent paddle
passing.
Unti l those homey-men-like-ourselves,
blind to spilled silver (or to
even its possibility)
rolled like smoking stones at our feet
and stained the grasses grey.
Or else they were flung down without life–
like an insul t,
to scorn what we adore, and by inference,
our taste for it.
If
by evening they hadn't stopped dropping,
at least the shadows were made single
and no addition of daredevil
could darken them.
