drycrikjournal

The dead and early leaves of Buckeyes cling
to great arms of flesh broken under low snows
look much the same in May as those rooted
in the earth, all shades of brown—yet severed.

Live Oaks on their sides like dominos collapsed
in the middle of a green thicket. Blue Oaks
stand like statues to disfigured soldiers after
war—all casualties of time—time will repair.

But a man steps lightly, carries a chain saw,
clears the way to mend his fences, rebuilds
surveyed lines through the downfall,
over rocks and rills you can’t feel on paper.

It is beyond us, always going on and on,
sometimes growing wilder in the process
when man’s dreams weaken with his flesh.
And therein the hope for new beginnings:

fresh spring starts and stems to learn again—
the great nature of things going on without
attention, without notice that still pumps
within us yet. We just don’t know it.

The phrase in my head,
the last line to the chorus
of an unwritten song—

my upbeat blank sheet
that needs to smile
at the truth, to be both

pleased and vulnerable, a
Bobby Bare song that applies
to loving and dying well—

when it’s all done,
there’s nothin’ more
to leavin’ than goodbye.

Perhaps her eyes go
early in the first verse
to search unfamiliar scenery,

then his retreat
to the wordless sounds
of rivers and streams—

one we can all sing
when there’s nothin’ more
to leavin’ than goodbye.

Endorphin bound, we humans
sometimes pack compressed loads,
test the fabric of mind and flesh

like the old joggers focused
on the haze at road’s end
as footfalls pump within their brains.

Blaze orange and magenta tunics,
fists like pistons she can feel
in the corner of her pasture,

one lags the other, but coming
closer, blowing harder
as she wheels to get away

through two fences, wire screeching
into the roadway. They pursue her
without stopping for two miles—

before she gets to ground she doesn’t
know, then leaps another to get free.
It’s contagious, all that determination

up and down a road that is no secret
to armies of Harleys and bright-hued
bicyclists, daredevils on crotch rockets,

four-wheel drives dragging trailers
of more toys within the stream of weekend
Christians speeding towards their God.

We have become the obstacles, or part
of the scenery they never see. We pray
before we cross the road to changing times.