I kicked loose from those peculiar
squalls, looked down years
later from a different state, one free
of crepe myrtle, mustard greens,
grits, the telescope reflecting
my one big eye.
What breed of citizen refuses
warmth, refutes a river’s meanders
into myth, disputes bees tangled
in their flight lines. Who casts
her bone dice across nostalgia’s
ruined map. Once the alligator jaws
find me again, drop me back
into the archive of storm, I fall
through its flat, migraine
light, run my hand down pages
squirming with memory,
chant their script in a bad
accent, riff a borrowed
creole back into blank mouths.
At the museum of our civic
remains, its animal damp, I remember
a little, return to the crucial
ligaments, what tore, I wander
out, name the vacancies, number
the rubble. Garden, river or trouble,
everything grows beyond indigenous
walls and made walls,
beyond my spells for weather.
For I am no more fluent than rain,
than the wind that pronounces
the waves.
