The Page

Today,
like a manatee

with 2 human hands

prying
at the earth.

This is the moment

of the caterpillar.
the moment

of a leaf

between its branch
and the ground.

A single page

of life's story
with its high beams

on you,

skeleton black
eyes of autumn.

Raspberries

*
I don't know
whether to think

it was a good
thing or a bad

thing, but as I came
by with the blower,

the bird's
wings opened

and it took flight
one last time

into a sacred raspberry
memorial.


*
A sacred memory:

The summer
you reached your hand

out to me
and offered your fruit.

The Egg Van

*
I was stopped
by Barnum
and Bailey's Circus

train. A rainy
September day
in Elkhart, Indiana.

*
I am the stunt
man in the minivan
preparing to jump the tracks.

This is my job.

Unconsummated

For One Thousand
and One Nights I slept
under your half-moon eyes.

Exodus

Did you see the wilderness within me

And come to tear down the sky between us—

My Midwestern dream-face

Shackled in her Arabian Nights.

We shared the Red Sea

on the banks of the Saint Joe.

I wonder, was it Moses who rose

His staff in the air and separated us forever?

Agrarian

What is it?!
In the corn field
like a petrified

raptor's eye

beaming my
ancient hominin?!?
It comes in rows

cracked naked

over a scarecrow's kneecap.
the smack & cheek!
the scream-profile

of a stinkbug,

the ones with faces
like a mummy's
imaginary child

Just got slapped like a corncob!
your aaaahhhh-mouth
could be a case

of the billies:

Rolls get buttered!
Line up your ducks!
That violent stickshift

in cryptic Indiana,

that ain't nobody's labradoodle!

Gale

What happened to the birds?

This morning,

they were wild

like a zoologist's

play toy.


And what happened to the deer?

they have vanished

from the graveyard

in the breeze

of September's napalm.

        (I can only imagine coyotes).