because the stream cuts me into paths every morning:
makes me shallow and deep, soft, jagged and drifting
and we all greet the crayfish in miller’s creek eventually:
become ships in the komorebi
become chips off of secret rock below the rusty pylon
on a hilltop, invisible, quietly
pinging signals to the strangers nextdoor from a raspberry bush

because we all become scarecrows, lost
in tomato vine towns
and red maple roots and branches
scared to disturb the dirt or the clouds

because sometimes the bats come out at dusk
to enrapture small ghosts that hang on wilted branches in the woods
climbing toward where the sun used to be

and i join them when that little river runs deep enough