Working Outside at Night

The moon swells and its yellow darkens nearer the horizon and soon all the aluminum rooftops shall appear, orange and distinct beside the orange sun, while the diamond flares in its vacuum within. It is simple to be with the shovel, thoughtless, inhabited by this divorce, it is good the luminous machinery, silenced, waits, nice that the conveyor belts choked with sand convey nothing. When I return home to coffee at 7:45 the lithe young girls will be going to high school, pulling to their mouths stark cigarettes through Arizona’s sunlight. These last few months have been awful, and when around five the roosters alone on neighboring small farms begin to scream like humans my heart just lies down, a stone.