We’re tying our shoes-- as we think about the day's gifts
          Holding strings-- curling ribbons with latent sweat
"I’'ve heard they’ll pull us through-- we tie around each box
          eyelets, through tunnels and catacombs."-- a shimmering luster abetting
beyond the sky.

Today we mourn those drained sausage-limbs at noon-time
     --(Sallow-cheeked mistresses and fortunes abounding
        for those who have time for such things.)

With tears
     --hiding the feelings of those who have none

                  slapping the ground.
We see
           every unfurling light
combine with blots of pity
                                                 to fortify prairie grass.

And I remember an old gravel highway that separates my family and church from geologic
build-up which the wind is slowly chewing.

I can't be with them-- like the western, sandy steppes of Nebraska,
     I can't hold water, and their loving nourishment sinks through me.
     My arms won't be like ribbons, in an embrace of the
dead’s remitting tendrils.
     As I lay outstretched on the Sand Hills, shielding my belly from the desert sun;
     boring water trapped in caverns under neatly wound sweat-bows and boxes
I, one day, too, cry emaciated tears.

     Surely, we are tethered firmly to the spool, dangling with
tensity on the tines of breath, shimmering, aloft-- but also, don’t forget:

We are fastened by a knot above our leather casing
     holding the body in-piece and being manipulated at once.
     We decorate the boxes, in which we are to lie
with wet, green ribbon, pulled through rocky soil by course, chapped hands.