You are the stair I forgot

You sleep with overflowing flowers


In mid fall
The stairs pull breath
In hard inhalations 
From the rise beneath your feet


There is a shadow, serious, oblique
With the weight
Of immeasurably tall buildings
Suspended by the petard height
Of afternoon, as if gravity were a sundial
Marks long since effaced
Edging gutters and
The wire haunted enfilades
Of birds escaping ledgers 
Til no-one knows what time

It tells


New stars about the face of evening 


Still, with each careful step
The darkness moves


In slow distress
Around you