we pulse along the black asphalt
cutting through black grasping woods
silhouetted against a not-black sky
the moon lies low alone above
through the flickering limbs
monstrous global palely grand
unchanging mutability
stone cold
fired by imagination
ride above the road
we dive for the gate
beneath you—impossible
We all know that you can’t rhyme “silver”
but think for a moment of cousin Wilbur
who said the same is true for “orange”
before he left us all to forage
for the laces green and purple
of his Myrtle’s Playtex girdle.
Rhyming silver made me shiver;
rhyming orange paid my mortgage;
purple stunned a turquoise turtle.
*based on the urban myth that there is no word in the English language that rhymes with purple or silver or orange. And I wish any of those rhymes paid my mortgage—but them’s the breaks for a poet.
in the mountains across the river
thunder grumbles somewhere
threatens someone else
with electric consequence
specks on distant water
bob unconcerned
gulls glide on lazy updrafts
watching for a pale green flash below
a fat carp twists through
waving weeds
by the rough leggings
of our dock
a cicada saws the afternoon in half
