poem

Lookout

We passed the carrion, the mangled deer, 

On the side of a bend in the road

That wended its way up the hill

To a lookout I wanted the kids to see.

Ooooooooooooooooo, they scream,

daddy gross it smells roll up the window!

The rank gamy invasiveness of odor.

I wanted them to see the valley stretching out below

The mist enshrouded trees

The generational timelessness of 

All that falls below,

All the unnavigable naturalness

They'll never probably go.

But don’t stand too close to the edges.

Goddammit what did I say!

kids

You don’t know enough of 

the buzzed moss or
blotched whitened lichens,

the blood against rock

in the noonday sun,

the slippery humors
that ooze from the 

dead along the way

8/2/19