Flub

To flub a jinx is to delay fate, a strategy
that leaves things hanging until the next
bulb flash pops from yonder, instills grace,
and turns me back again to the city. Think of these
pines with magnificent arterial bark,
and the rocks along the shore caked with green moss,
how lovely. The lake trumpets a blare of dusty blue,
from here, anyway. And look, the goose
feathers dot the tight surface of the water
while the water bugs skitter and feast
on errant insects that bob and perform their last flutters.
Yesterday, two dragonflies flew ecstatically connected
over the water and landed on the dock right next to me.
They looked awkward and embarrassed, their late summer urges
compelling them to clumsy mating. I think of the city
for a moment, its glare and trumpeting of all things
cosmopolitan and decaying. Its concrete structures
with tinted glass and stylish leather jackets, gas buses
and fragrant cabs, milky rain, and dodgy bits.
What calm I encountered here may have prepared me
for some other movement away, it swings me,
this magnificent jinx of delay.