Evacuated Afternoon

Sunlight floods a sky
dyed cool cobalt
like a powder flash -
a seeming artificial day.
The world smells of plastic,
all new toy and inflatable
vinyl-scented, it
numbs my mind,
flushes out the anxiety
so prone to infect
my feeble consciousness.
Leaves bare or green on
full-limbed trees
brighter than I've ever seen,
some neon pseudo-nuclear glow
makes my bright, over-alert eyes
seem dark and corrosive
in spite of themselves.
But the glittering water before me
looks like glass
rippling with seismic waves,
an aquamarine to crystalline,
too absent of leaves of debris
to be anything except a prop.
My brain buzzes with the
promise of evacuation,
a hopeful static like
the constant humming of bees;
they crash against my
gray matter
but never sting.
And some voices ding from behind
cries like crows,
fully swallowed souls -
children as nuisances
splash the too cold water
on my unfairly toned calves
but the music turns louder
and the din makes a
new buzzing
underneath the flashlight sun.
And if this afternoon is
artificial,
evacuated,
I don't want to know