A slow news day, but I did like the obit about the butcher   
who kept the same store for fifty years.   People remembered   
when his street was sweetly roaring, aproned   
with flower stalls and fish stands.   
The stock market wandered, spooked by presidential winks,   
by micro-winds and the shadows of earnings.   News was stationed   
around the horizon, ready as summer clouds to thunder--   
but it moved off and we covered the committee meeting   
at the back of the statehouse, sat around on our desks,   
then went home early.   The birds were still singing,   
the sun just going down.   Working these long hours,   
you forget how beautiful the early evening can be,   
the big houses like ships turning into the night,   
their rooms piled high with silence.