Improve the darkness. Scatter it with stars, the way a dream permits hyperbole.
The way a diary recommends the ordinary, the priest’s devotions, the daughter’s petition.

Let spring spread its green tablecloth with plenty. The world’s a picnic.
A vixen cries from the wood. A woman Picks up the telephone and hesitates.

Look at the book of pictures the child recollects. Kate Greenaway petticoats.
A tiger with a purple umbrella. So much of memory is snapshot,

Mouse-trap, flash. Eyes glowing red as a werewolf’s. Misapprehensions.
Prove me wrong, says God in the preamble To prayer.

The wind kneels on the prairie where the redwings have returned.
A girl, dazed with light, suspends the morning in a sheet of blossom.

Far away, snows melt and skid from the mountain, propelling the creeks into jocularity.
Whitewater revels. Tragedy of the petrified forest. The stoic enjoys nothing.

A hawk on a high branch watches a flock of small birds alleluia noontide.
Tense with hunger like a siren. Smoke circles into a question-mark.

Behold the houses of the rich and the poor. How a roof means salvation, a floor
recognition, a bed repose. The old man on the porch waiting for cars to pass.

The travelers with the maps and expectations of the young. He remembers
the spotted horses, the foothills, the jack pines, the grey jays quarreling,

the Yellowstone River’s abrupt exclamation as the earth falls away.

Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 18, Issue 2.

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