grows legs and kicks me.
It follows like one deer after another
across the highway. Don’t touch me
I’ll walk rain-soaked
before a ride in your truck don’t
stop for me. A parable:
One man promises a farm, two mountains,
and ten thousand turnips to a second man.
They raise seedlings to fruit—
every bit of flesh, they sell.
The first man says more.
The second does not say
I am hungry and cannot grow.
Driving silence up
the mountain, a woman arriving
to two men is a rock thrown
into a pond, breaker of clouds.
I tell you now, words will walk
out of my mouth and gather at your bed
like bad-dreaming children.
There your gray yard is ungrowing.
Your kingdom a circle of swallows.