There is no true constancy.
Rivers low with drought,
grass dried wiry, leaves dull,
the season uneven after such a wet spring,
late frost killing the apple blossoms
and cattle sluggish,
disappointed by the taste of hay.
More coyotes this year,
mornings so cold wedding rings slide loose,
scars on arms reddening, pines stiff,
geese clanking overhead,
ponds giving off the metallic smell of melting ice,
and herons staring down at the mud.
The sea is pulling ships under in storms,
sailors amazed by the brutality of waves,
typhoons ripping slums from the shoreline,
houses split and adrift with plastic trash,
debris spinning in gyres,
gulls desperate, and hooks rusting in the fish.
Wreckage keeps arriving on the edge,
life preservers riding the tides,
land pouring itself out as silt
and washing back as sea shells,
the high water marks rising
with bottles, bones and fragments of rope.
Roads follow the rivers all the way to open dirt,
the breath of women in labor and men digging graves
forming clouds over the fallen barns,
locks fused with their keys,
bullets scattered in the soil
and nails wrapped in the roots of briars.
The starlight comes unsteady,
arriving through the smoke,
forest fires burning the earth blank again,
but a man plows rows in the ash,
stacks the stones dropped by glaciers,
follows his furrows home
watching the sky for rain.