Direction

A cloud has taken
its surroundings into

a serpent

and made the moon its eye.
The bone-white shines on

ponderous ships;

vessels of empty captains;
men admiring a cyclopean death-

eye catapulting

like a freight train forever forward.

Rain

Me
and my

exoskeleton.

It's a true
out-of-body

experience.

I watch
a thousand

cicadas

drown
beneath

the treetops.

A diesel
truck,

Illuminated

by a flash
of lightning,

singing in the rain.

My True Love

A cicada sits
next to its

exoskeleton.

Two deer vanish
into the graveyard

of trees.

The river is low.
And the dead lie naked

in the merciless sun.

Turtles gather upon
the gnarly white bones

of oak, ash and thorn.

And the bells
of St. Mary's

are ringing.

Stuff

I thought that if
I took this ancient

Roman coin

out of its protective
case and held it, and
possibly licked it,
that it would somehow        change
my life...

but it didn't.

Frog Snuggle

To bed with
frog-finger.

The [thank God (for)]

cute curly fingers
under the chin

of said amphibian.

A sweetie bear-tickle
just under the lower lip;


the sound of an old lady
googling a baby:

Who's my poopsie-woopsie?

I knew that, before
I touched your butt,

you would hop back
into the old frog pond

like we never (even) met.

Cottonwood

I had a star-
spangled dream.

I will never escape
the crumbling

of the megafauna,

the tumbrel
of branches and leaves,

the Fall, the field,
the pitchfork, the rake,

the shovel,

the wrack of the tractor
and all of these pieces

of paper lightly floating
away from my grasp

like cottonwood.

My Handful of Dirt

It's easy to forget
the name of a man

who has an economic way
of blending in with the flora

(bushes, trees)

branches scatters like fallen soldiers

I'm alive, I'm alive,
in the trenches, I'm alive.

Which side are you on boys?
Forgotten, but alive.