Cabal

Cloud passes for a moment over
the street, calming the quivers of grass
on vast lawns, relieving the tarmac
of the worst bubbling heat haze.

A soft wind creeps up and tricks around
poolside cries of American boys and girls
that hang, chimelike, with the echo
of a monastery, wind and voices lull
together, the herald of a memory;

closing both eyes on the swings,
whipping like a rocket through the air
with, on all sides, a cabal of voices
like chants, the soft punt of a ball
sailing in the hot air overhead.

But after a twisted minute the cloud
is gone, the road is wobbling up
like a spread parachute, the plastic
mailboxes are microwaves on white sticks,
little Union flags fall limp in the noon
from their cheery poles at the end
of each driveway, among the shrubbery.

The children, whose shouts had risen
as incantations out of an unknown back yard,
are silent. Only chirps of street-noise now;
the flowers broiling, the milk in all the
the fridges cracking sour, the inaudible sigh
of Porches in garages, brand new, devaluing.

Through half-closed eyes, the clouds
crackle like an old time movie, black
with the heat and their great wet weight,
angelic Hindenburg crashing in a flicker
of cine flame through the stark blue sky.
Their passing to the horizon seems to
whiten and buckle the mind's blank corners.