Plain Prairie Gown                                                                                                  

One kick of dust and gone

is the reeling chance of a lifetime

to unskein the ravel of your salt.

Hands in tangle, I gamble my goods

at the cross, crawl that way to service

a legion of stevedores and queens

at the lowliest pier in the harbor,

then beg the fishes eat my bones.

I hunt the fleeting features

of some other in the street who

might scatter me a powder of you

when you are not there.

Better to stray in the instant

when your back turned kindly away,

barely stirring under moonless heaven

in a plain prairie gown.

Staggering brevity shadows my lights.

I pit febrile motion to the click and swing

of safer measure, swallow the knocking

pulse of days and days, lay hands to mediate

the undone ghost curling adrift of us.

Peacock Journal, December 2018

Sequestrum, December 2019