Chimney The autumn twilight The masquerade The days move forward Thoughtless cadets on parade Do I feel more afraid? Than what I used to be? Of being somebody, or nobody A fading glint Took me for a walk I buttoned my coat Though you wanted to talk With your dissolvable salt I know you didn’t mean to You’re just telling the truth The faces of strangers The indifference of a moment A neighborhood renting Because they can’t own it With their inevitable sin The motorcyclist makes a delivery Beside the lawn with a smoking chimney Chimney, has a memory Of the way things were supposed to be Chimney, lighting up in the dying heat With almond eyes set beside crow’s feet The evening animates In sashaying wind It could be leading me further out Or right back in To yesterday’s hobgoblin Everyone’s smarter than me Monuments to efficiency And I’m walking in a circle To find my way home Dimming those palaces in my mind Where the light relentlessly shone Upon pillars of stone Crumbling to dust in the present Eventually preserved in a dangling pendant When I’m a few blocks away It kicks back to sense Some ideas fade Love is permanent For a sense of recompense Then Chimney coughs and returns inside Is she thinking about the one she left behind?