rolling home

rolling home

The red winged blackbirds trill
The lightning fires over the St. Anthony Falls,
as far down as the Cahokia Diversion Canal
and all the mysteries we left undiscovered
lie in the miles behind

It’s a quiet, sullen car that rolls
back east, saddened by the rain,
twisted with wordless thoughts of returning
to normal life and all its obligations;
its snags and dangerous currents
Nothing seems bearable today

Dance Lightning Dance
curl and crash in an unknown tongue
              in prehistoric displays
Release your thunderous roars as wrath
upon the headwaters, upon us poor sinners
solumnly treading the American bottom
dreaming of the tallgrass prairie
Let this be the day to curse and to worry

The rain & its steadiness
adds its lot to the myriad of lakes & streams
which all seem to empty into the mighty Mississippi
flooding the Illinois bayou;
feeding a rangy spread of cypress
and the cattail marsh

                  (lay me down among the wild beds of rice;
                  the beds of extinct glacial lakes)
Beautiful in slumber;
the fullness of lips and cheek
perfectly shaped brows and lashes
the lion-brown freckles that look as if
arranged by a doll maker
ignoring my furtive yet loving glances,
lost to the sleep which follows
many an exhausting hour at play
in the coffee-colored waters.