After Midsummer
The bath tub looks on unbroken forest and has a white hose for shower. Cold water it sends down over my skin leads me to leap out of my dream. Cheeks tingling, singing, I scrub my smooth chest, legs folded, reaching the cracks between toes. Today the bath room window does not go abstract with mist. I like what I see: green honey locust, a little yellow leaf in the air.
Jackhammers
In her new house she tossed and turned, sleep twined with the jackhammers, jackals in the street pickpocking concrete. She dreamed jackhammers rooting in dried-out fields: bony machines, huge black hoses, dust. She called it waking when the noise grew more distinct, she lived in spite of jackhammers until the night she dreamed the silence. Stars fell and she woke to the clean air, quiet street and slowly changing angle of light.