3/22/09

How many dead things and barely opening buds and stiffened forked branches
And rusted beer-cans can one account for, how many more engine-blocks
And harvesters sunk among the weeds? How many weeds and cat-tails
Sprung from marshy landscape, runoff winding in rivulets and courses
The naked eye cannot trace, as it can trace how the crow leapfrogs
Toward another spot of carrion after the cars pass? How many
Stiff, forked, twiggy, branched, and budding things
And how many cold winds crossing unlovely flats before
The hospital dump? How many more biohazard vials unsealed,
How many Coke bottles by the river bed beside the tampon strings?
What crawls from culverts other than the rainbow of an oil-slick?
Where lies the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? How much longer
Can one write about the brush of clouds above the orange landscape
And desert sunset juxtaposed beside the rusty Roto-rooter
And sundry collapsed machinery, about old beercans,
Or forked and spiny desert flora. A snow flurry during early spring
Is winter’s stiff answer to the coming thaw, as if to reiterate
I’m still around. How many spare tires, rusty axles? That’s the kicker.
Chew more than you bite off. Time to stop. The snow flurry,
No more than half an hour, thickened air before it went away.