The moth flies lightly. as the breeze.
Each taper of mustard vibrates the field
On hills inundated with its yellow
To make it almost disappear
For a moment, as the vapor
Moved by wind shivers and seems
To wipe the earth slate clean
Until the equation you remember kicks in,
The farm machinery that plied this ground
The grasses now transcended
In golden seed.
So it is with me
Bursting star stuff from the tar
As if its disappearance is an end
And what has ended never gone
In spiral time recursion
Is the stop watch to align,
The ticking tails of a pinto and mule
Sharing one vibration.
Two grackles dive and spray
Across the empty sense of play
In one frequency of thought.
A blackbird bounces
On a branch
Like a pharaoh being rowed
To the after-world
Its eyes reflect,
But all I know
Is how to attend the flow,
The mangy trailer cat that demands
The same neck scratches
In the same hypnogogic zone
Under the chin
As my white king at home,
Who spares me his knowledge now
And his jealousy, which will come
For no apparent reason anyway.
I sigh. The horse tail clocks
Are no longer synchronized anyway.
The cat remembers she
Doesn't even really know me,
A white horse replaces a black
At the wash bay.
The talk is of rattlesnakes
As seasonal threat, the downside
Of shade, so to speak
But birds are in their music
And the black flies are in manure,
Where they whirr
Temporary pockets
As random as their bites
Of whatever is white —
The pure can take it,
The discomfort, as experience,
Like old vine Zin.
The grayer among us
Must be guided
By ice plant blooms,
Gopher holes.
There's one now, with a broken arm
From arching too harshly
From the rattler curled
Around a tack room saddle.
