Clochard

by Cristina Nehring (April 2025)

–
The night
has taken his day
into its mouth
and swallowed it.
–
No more streams of light
in the debris of dark
he crushes under his
foot like glass.
–
The sun has set
by the time he wakes;
it’s not yet up
when he falls down.
–
He wonders where
the day went,
the joy that steels us
for the grief of age,
–
the silence that comes
before the storm.
He can’t remember it,
as he stumbles
–
faceless through the
folds of dusk.
The low beams
of a lost Renault,
–
The fly-flecked
streetlamps (like
egg yolks with
pepper), the piss-
–
colored halo
around a filling
station are all the
sun he knows.
–

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