Breakers

The blond tabby darts
across boiling asphalt, hustles
its haunches right at the end 

before the curb & the white
Cadillac swallows it whole.

Could I have closed
my eyes, contributed some cosmic
nudge, sent 

a jolt into its hustle just
a little more.  Could I have bent
the rules of physics and ribbon 

the road around
the car.  In this suburban 

jungle death lounges
as though appeased,
coils of metal, plastic, glass, 

rubber steam-rolling
through hearts of overpasses —
astonishing lack 

of injury, except to air,
the faded corners of afternoon, 

cloud-banked ratios &
sun-gilded hours
tilting in the joists of time.

Molten bronze fills sky,
blue stretch of bay,
yellow stripes, and steaming 

green marsh.  Nowhere
to go 

the bronze does not
find you. 

Death snaps
out, like that,
another

thing gone.
I do 

not want
that impossible blond cat 

to go — broken
   golden
   dynamo
into ebony ground.  I do not

want to go.

Joshua Bridgwater Hamilton holds an MFA from Texas State University.  His poetry collections are Excavator (Gnashing Teeth Publishing), Rain Minnows (Gnashing Teeth Publishing), and Slow Wind (Finishing Line Press), and his poetry appears in such journals as Windward Review, Driftwood, Voices de la Luna, Tiny Seeds Journal, and Sybil Journal.