We sat in the place, asked for a half-jug of white wine; it was day when we sat down, just night when we left, & what we got was this: rain clouds goose-wing grey from the west but not near—this to be the next day’s rain—& as dark fell the lamps in the square came on, jaune, & from a soapstone dome flowed a font whose sound was new to us by night—how had we not heard it? But the best, this: the young, who sat on the rim of that font, black baseball caps, some bent as if to throw dice, some to their long-haired loves, French lips to French lips, all limned black in new night, backlit with lamplight as in an old snapshot, that same light caught now in a bank of glass from a fifth-floor flat, sent back to us—then from nowhere, somewhere, in full sail, a half moon.

Can this be real? you said. Don’t pull back the veil.

–

Gerald Fleming is the author of One (Hanging Loose Press, 2016), The Choreographer (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2013), Night of Pure Breathing (Hanging Loose Press, 2011), and Swimmer Climbing onto Shore (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2005). He lives in California.