THE 4TH ON A WEDNESDAY

Finally, in what darkness there was
under an inconvenient moon,
the distant thump and rumple
of our civic display began.
I heard it from the pool deck,
but preferred to watch cloud bottoms,
dark blue as modeling clay,
chasing a humid, departed front.
So many paused, patient at midweek
to reverence bombs, but better
they had recalled Hephaistos
pounding commerce into a shield —
music for the knee-deep audit
of risk and yield.