a bolus of dried cranberries for coney

Bungee corded cargo caught between ditch and

the river drops into rubbery knocking rhythms

on a gravel path kicking red dust that coats

sharp oiled sprockets and chains to a province south

of brush strokes flat and grace notes rhyme:

the periwinkle glow flattened laughter

on the banks of newly sprouted fescue

calls and draws with fingers curled

hinting foreign ways in blown clouds

and thorny pink hedgerows close

near ash felled trunks mottled white,

poached giraffe hide on bank chopped

a fractal map of bark design mimicked

in bits and pieces and pieces and bits.

A gape faked for brickwork fades

and chipped red is just unpointed

mortared oil, anointing aromatic grief

with a grey feather flipping in the mulch-

scarlet leaves worm-eaten loose today

but not the sun whitened log noose hung

by denim fingers frayed in unskilled blue.

A recall of how few things are known but

to the common wise so obvious a nucleus

is small sun calico on a cool steel guardrail

and there's a perfect rock to break the black

and sink until blue under the foamy spillway:

a drowned name on a granite bench carved,

a bleached burst of plastic flowers timed

to mourn the rainbow that one arced breath-

the price of tossing that burden is somewhere

being shed enough for tears and laughter both.

Let the mind prattle to exhaustion

and you're left counting rabbits in a morphine haze-

look, there's one over there.

It's beige.