Apart from all Else

Behind the low line of houses,
you can hear the traffic
day and night if you listen,
though it is not as atonal as it
sounds, at first.

In a room beside the freeway,  my uncle bummed a cigarette
and as he flicked the borrowed lighter,
fell into a rumbling heap
of a grand-mal seizure, that electricity.  He
did not cry out. You can
only survive so many–this was his third.

Heavy morning mist weaves through
the evergreens.
Graveyards line either side of the road
that winds 
down from the mountain
into town
where the lights are.