Hello short darling
I would plow you
like spring earth

but your husband
has only been
dead eight

eight months and I
fear the shiver of
my thighs

would be a cold
cold reminder
of him.

I am lost again
beyond the hills
where we made love

under the South Dakota
sun in the wide, wide
open as the wheat

lofted toward the bluest
of June skies and we
rolled and rolled

into an indifferent
world forever,
forever.

Morning Sunlight keens like a mother
cries for her dying child & leaves
abandon their trees

while fall presumes winter
will glower like black
ice

hard from
preceding
months,

where the promise
of spring seems
unattainable.

I’ve got dials in my head, clicking like a winding down timer
While I'm finding a channel that isn’t just static
Or a faded children's primer, illegible and bleeding its ink
Like its supposed to be tragic or the ***** Dozen
Resting in the kitchen sink; reduced to vegetables after
An overtly silent war on the terror of omniscient pesticides.
We're the violent, thirsty poor and we're the weeds thrusting
Our roots through drunken misdeeds with the staying power
Of a half-decayed pursuit scrawled in the margins
Of a faded children's primer, illegible and bleeding its ink
Till it sprawls off the page into gin-fueled wishes
And rage till it's only me again, fighting dials and static,
Supposing that I can't be mended as I light another match
And wait for the commercials to end.