Prickly warmth beneath my hands
from sun-baked grass shriveled
dry and wilting gold. Shushing
my fidgeting fingers with their soft rustle
in the soughing breeze that ghosts
across my palms.

Lilac shadows grow violet
as twilight haunts the sun
out of the sky, the dusk-drenched
field creeping upon my toes, slinking
up the magnolia tree whose bark digs
into my back and drizzling darkness
in its wake, transmogrifying branches
into spindly specters that hunch
overtop my head like guardians
of the night.

Through the canopy glint chips
of sky, dripping pools
of starlight and nostalgia
into my eyes. Memories
welling up, not a heave
but a sigh, playing out scenes
foreign to how they originally
appeared, yet truer now in how
the feelings fall across
the faces; gentle with the past,
with the players, strict
as the moon who only once
withholds her glow.