Playground, Night Washing Over

Playground, Night Washing Over

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A far sunset
when we enter
isn’t done yet
when some things get
as off centre
as the swing set’s
swaying censer.
Here the landlocked
grainy colour
sandbox goes gray,
grows a duller
sunken tar. Stays
till monkey bar
shipwreck shadows
from some ago
emerge to merge
on a ripped deck
as dark surges.
The evening hours
are evening ours,
and the surf is
on every surface
strange or estranged.
Then the see-saw
is severed by shade.
There we see/saw
things made and fade
to ocean terrain—
now as though never
in motion or plain.

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