The blue flame

crackles up the spine

of the windmill then right

to a jackrabbit below. A light

sapphire wire, electrified. A splice, a trace

defiant as the poppy’s root pushing space for itself

beneath itself, making absence from presence.

And the jagged light blue slashes the air, tears

scars between the clouds and land. The force

of rabbit that bolts from dirt to a boom

of fur is greater than you

might think. Firecracker sparks explode the night.

Fur bursts through the sky, sprinkling our fields

in mockery. In browned and burnt-smelling effigy,

tufts of collectively prayed-for rain. You think,

watching, what you didn’t have you don’t miss… But oh

what you could. Your teeth rattle sharp and white. How they cut,

insist on violence, out-blooming their dried-up roots.

Hand-lettered

Roads that read like blank pages

lined in truck and tractor tracks.

Toys punctuate our ongoing yards.  White exclamation

of the home-sewn baseball suddenly dropped in dirt.

That common ho-hum eroding wheels and dolls.

Charity is not sustainable. All that light

steadily sheds, and as the wind blasts red paint from the barn plank,

as skin ever-peeling from a sun-pumelled brow. As this

disgusting leaving. For loosening

fencelines read Eastern Elk. For sagging

structures read Ancient Bison. I have to scan

my last three horses in fear

for signs of blindness. A window

left open, a forecast. None will ask

for charity, just translations worth believing.