HOME | DD

Description
body div#devskin0 hr { }

I walk over dried worms, the day after rain, and wonder if their lives (defined by these last moments) were courageous or moronic. I wonder if I am the splinter or the lion—and who would be the splinter? Doesn't someone have to be?

I crawl on my hands and knees to find the river. Trees grow from its overflow. There has been too much rain this week. There has been too much rain this week. Where are the silver linings—the tree in front of me grows proudly as the water laps around its thighs. Ah, I muse, I think I understand the splinter.

Two trains come by. Two trains thunder through this railroad town, and they whisk the chocolate dirt. The earthquakes scare the geese. They blow by like dried leaves, and there, there is the sound of the river. Here [in the stillness] is the display of hope.

I cry in front of the river, longing to sing alongside chickadees—I do not know enough happy songs. I cough with the crows, instead: I do not know enough happy songs.

But I know train songs, leaving songs, lonely songs, wounds-bleeding-out songs, and maybe they will water the dirt and grow a happy tree. Maybe it will grow somewhere there isn’t supposed to be a tree, or a river will migrate somewhere there isn’t supposed to be a river—perhaps we are everything we are not—and someone will pass by it, take a breath, and feel like they can hold it for another year.

When I crawl to find the sun, I grab a broken bush end. My hands are cracked, hibernating with the dead grass, the dried leaves. I wonder if it is perhaps stillness before the flight—the growth. Oh, I smile, I think I understand the splinter.