Category: Personal/Political

an empty coal train
is rolling past a hobo camp

so many vacancies
like christ’s tomb

while the emergency room at the hospital
has no beds to spare

no windows of any kind
only an addict’s hallucinations

and a skinny old man
yelling help without the p

hell hell hell for hours
until the hospitalist snaps

out here it’s nearly easter
another winter’s worth of fossil fuels

have risen indeed
on wings of mercury

a gray fox ravaged by rabies
leaves her pelt beside the burrow

as the first hepaticas
raise their blue cups

Our lives are an amnesty given us.
William Stafford

meanwhile the trees
are relaxing their grip

turning toward sleep
in a kind of hypnagogia

vivid and hallucinatory
against the gray

‘HUNTERS WEAR ORANGE
SO SHOULD YOU’

though the sign itself is yellow
as are many red maples

it’s the most primary
that school-bus color

meanwhile children play tag
outside an Amish school

in clothes so plain
it marks them as exotic

one of them rooted to the spot
scrunching up his face

a hole opens in the clouds
but not for any missiles

meanwhile skeletons
are unsettling in front yards

one pushes a lawnmower
towards several bony arms

like barked sticks
sprouting from manicured grass

in the distance some engine
i don’t notice until it stops

and i’m left with the sound
of my footsteps in fallen leaves

walking the empty bed
of a former coal country railroad

past pastures and high hayfields
up into the autumn hills

just below the clouds
a raven gives his voice box a shake

and out tumbles
something like a child’s cry
crossed with a horn

18 October 2023