Brown shoes read herring leather souls
effs and esses and dam's worths at a time

Said, yoke up,
some time, Old Brother Bowers, he'd shout
get outa bed, say it like I'da said it, he'd say

some day, the LORD, is gonna wake us up,

because Old Brother Bowers, knew, he was
not long for this world, and he had preached

some revivals on the reservation, hear him tell

Hellfire, he was preaching in a brush arbor,
on what appeared,  in his vision a treeless plain,

the image of escaping convicts is a meme, true-
ly yoked to the old rugged cross… Cretan wise

brother, where art thou strikes a cord, banjo
boom la cachuma boomer strokes set a vibration

Jubilation P. Cornpone partnered up with
Daddy Warbucks, dealing in orphans made warriors.

We did see our relatives in the funny papers, then.

Yes, we had all things in common, schooled normalized
and baptized to insure personal service, from the gate.

We started to see our selves in comedies of errors,

And some families went into televised animation,
while some just drifted away on smoking flax waves

out past the street lights at the on ramps, in memo-

reum riverdanced right wit little bird shadow tats
tapping out an esohes hester panim this and that’s

where we start in the morning… if the power don't fail,
and the creeks don't rise and the jokes get broke

and all captives in my ink thinks flit freely in to the night.

As long as

the driving-force

is fear.

We haven't a chance.

Trucks need to figure

it out.

Lisa was very smart,
always checks
the weather forecast
before going out.

Over breakfast,
she turned on the radio
to listen to the Monday’s forecast:

“Heavy to very heavy rain,
with thunder and lightning.”

She smiled,
“oh, thank you!”
left her umbrella,
put on sunglasses,
and went to work.

The long distant runner
He ran all day and night,
Up hills
down hills
Through darkness
and light.
Taking in the views
Through his tired eyes,
Is this helping
My depression
If so I wonder why.
When I stop running
Into the black I drop
Therefore  I must
keep running
Hopefully I don’t
have to stop.

we walk the path to the spring
where the waters come constant
from the ground unfreezing
warm enough for duckweed to thrive
even in blue winter,
deep with snow.

the air holds few sounds,
the snap and tumble of tree limb,
river's crashing iced sheets,
the click and kew of the junco,
wind, amplified one hundred fold
razor sharp in the cold.

how does the waters know
who told it; here.
it's here that you will rise,
at the end of a path in a small cleft,
said by locals to be the gathering
place of the ancients, the fairies
and the dead who died before their time?

we come to the spring and beside it
as deep in the snow
as we are in its mysteries,
we become a part of the story
reassured that the promise
of the thaw is as constant
as the coming march sun
and the ever flowing water
at our feet.