from Bus North
Rural night—the lights off
in the distance glint like forsythia
petals scattered in a parking lot.
Anticipation is an act of perception.
*
This road, an erasure only keeping
the spaces
between every word
blacked out
*
A brush of cloud annotates
the empty sky, less color
than blue, drawing a bird
to parse the field’s scratched margins.
*
Image
of this floating
world:
sky like rippled water, clouds
leveling mountains—below in shadow,
thousands of thickening black fields:
nothing
if not asphalt—
half of everywhere
a road or parking lot
*
Distance is a measurement of time.
*
Morning—an afternoon cloudlessness
already encompassing
the treeline; cattle
compacted together,
pluralize the shade.
Seth
My friend is a sycamore.
Mornings, his branches disperse
leaves, which are pinned
to mud by needles, held
in place with brown tape.
