Smoke

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.

William Rieppe Moore is from Richland County, South Carolina and moved to Unicoi County, Tennessee with his wife. He resumed teaching high school English after earning an MA in English from East Tennessee State University. Moore’s poetry has received various honors, including Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations as well as finalist honors in the Ron Rash Award in Poetry and second place in the George Scarbrough Prize for Poetry. His poems appear in Driftwood, Blue Earth Review, Appalachian Places, James Dickey Review, North American Review, Terrain.org, and most recently in River Heron Review.