DEVOTIONAL

After meager 

supper and the dousing

of fire: 

the somnolent buzz

of katydids and crickets

chanting their drowsy
vespers from the thickets 

in the evening’s dying embers—

as if to sing 

this doleful meridian

and its citizens, still 

hampered by their 

misbegotten promises  

and heavily 

laden with drips 

of condensation 

from the leaky 

spigot of unfinished business,

more surely tonight
and swifter than ever 

to dreamless
undramatic slumber.