It is noon and black
as the leaves on which I slide –
leaves once green in sunlight,
once crinkled brown and floating,
now grinding into mud.
Sheltered by the tressle
while thunderheads
like graffitied freights,
like Buffalo herds,
quake the ground and deafen.
Rain slices –
now at my face and arms,
now at my back and legs –
cutting a path into the swollen
creek of critters
gulping, guttering, ending.
And then,
splayed fingers of light play lightly
on the broken keyboard tressle
for a cotillion of soaring birds.
|