And This Just In

Those footfalls on the stairs when the night shift went home,
the sunlight fanning through the dinosaur’s rib cage
the janitor’s sneeze – we’re asking questions
we’d like to know more.

The moth in the clock tower at city hall,
the 200th generation to sleep there – we may banner the story
across page one. And in Metro we’re leading
with the yawn that traveled city council chambers
this morning, then slipped into the streets
and wound through the city. The editorial page
will decry the unaccountable boredom
that overtook everyone around three in the afternoon.
Features praises the slowness of moonlight
making its way around the house, staying
an hour in each a chair, the inertia
of calendars not turned since winter.

A watchman humming in the parking lot
at Broad and Market – we have that –
with a sidebar on the bronze glass
of a whiskey bottle cracking into cheap jewels
under his boots. A boy walking across the ball field
an hour after the game – we’re covering that silence.
We have reporters working hard, we’re getting
to the bottom of all of it.