This moon is dusting our skin again
as otherworldly powder.
And the sound the river makes
is of a world cracked open and its blood
flowing past us as dark tar.
Yesterday we snaked from the tile
that runs along the side the house a great clump
of wet loam
that caused our basement to be flooded.
And in that wet earth we found a dead
rat snake curled as the ouroboros.
And since it is believed that the road up
and the road down are one and the same,
I am remembering that white ash
that grew hollow at its bottom last summer
by the house, and the sorrow with which
we finally brought it down.
And if tonight this moon appears as endless
bone or salt in the night sky,
and if the river still pulses from the vein,
once the great limbs of that white ash
would impale the moon
so hold it steady in the sky.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 12. Nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
