Noon Light at Rite Aid

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Silt-sifted shadow of a heat-shagged hedge
beside a beige building, a faded parking lot,
gum-dappled, ambling fissures traced in tar.

Barberry, scab-red, on beds of neat black mulch,
stopped firm by a sinuous rubber edge
near the mica-flecked grill of a heat-ticking van.

Transport of family-firming weal, it brims
with trade tools: rackets, goggles, cleats, and mud;
steel hardtail bike shoved bent-barred in the back;

dash mirror draped with a dark, beaded chain
that dangles down the body of a man,
limbs mantis-like on his black, brass-capped cross.

He’s swaying slightly, dulled with human blear,
suspended over sun-blanched leopard frames.
Each lens a different mirrored homage pays

from fish-eyed depths against the summer sky,
salmon-tinged cloud scraps clinging to his frame:
a crazy cloak, pearlescent, ludic, royal.

Vents in the beige outbuilding spit lint petals
that cling pungently—then fly across the mulch
through the blue, silt-sifted shadows of the hedge.