Even the night is like day.
Revelation. Crickets scratch
greasy strings. Hide and seek
in leaves spotted by a rot
within as if the North Star
had any say down here.
Polaris freezes light in vision
like ice crystals in windows
some too wintry morning.
Alter ego to the coloration
in a tobacco field, green parade
of day, when it’s a field
I’m not working. Bob had his
Stanley’s Crow Repellent. Saves
replanting. I had tin pie pans.
I had two rows and dirty arms
all the time. In and out of
the house without a child.
The poet laureate of Zirconia
grew up around a scarecrow
noisemaker, something about
a contraption of rusty gears
from an abandoned still staked
tight enough to screech,
squeak and squeal as if machines
were dying somewhere out
in a field steep as the garden
bottom where I set my rows
until their green blaze had
filled my mind with more
than the memory of them.
Pinch succors. Case in. These
bat-like leaves curing,
dark-fleshed woodshed monsters
hanging from tin roof rafters
as night covered like a cloak
where I, on the porch, lit
a burley leaf, green-pondering
the feeling, flame and smoke.
