Torn tired fences whip past like unzipped zippers.
This hilly farmland is home to the oldest of trucks.
Continually buckling three on a still springy but worn bench seat,
she carries a father and his two sons back out into the fields.
From a distance a grandmother hedgehog stands
to watch as the motorjangling automobile passes,
kicking up clouds of the same old dust
found in their fading overalls and behind their soonly dirty ears.
The road is as familiar as the creases found in their hard working hands.
Another day begins just like the last
and will finish with more heaping bowls of mother's famous dumpling stew -
which they would all still be tasting
if it wasn't for the lingering hint of breakfast sausage in their mouths.
Good Morning.
As I was leaving the store I saw somebody's granny
flatten another dollar bill for the gaudy lottery machine.
I couldn't help but wonder what would she do with the winnings.
Then I caught myself.
Because perhaps that doesn't matter?
Perhaps the rush of the pennyscratch is all she was after?
And the sly wrinkled grin of finding a winning ticket in her year-softened palm?
Yes, that must be it.
I am the little boy with chubby cheeks
who sits atop the purple moon
pulling twinkling stars out from his oskosh pockets,
tossing them in arcs across your night sky.
The freckles on my cheeks
count the smiles you make as you see the fruit of my tosses.
Yes, you are right to notice that
I am a very freckled boy.
I awoke to the purpleness of night
with my comfort cloud kicked off the end of the bed.
It with cold chattering teeth
and eyes staining themselves red.
I had no idea how long it had been there,
gently shivering beneath a blanket of neglect.
Then I felt it coming from the window.
The smart eye of a whale
was peering, unblinking, into the room.
I rose and went out onto the deck.
What I saw will always move me:
thousands of giant blue whales hovering
outside the windows of sleepers.
There were no others like me who had risen to see it
but I still believe that it happened.
Don't be a mouse, be a lion
