Memorial for a Tractor Left Idling
       

When the tropical, electronic birds wake you each morning, you remind yourself to picture the land you live on from above: quite flat, green with early summer, a blot of a town spreading only so far, then shallow, flood-prone fields spattered with woodlots. Today, this vision picks one of two wide, slow rivers to follow and travels as far as the next, much smaller, town: a four-way stop, two churches, a boat launch, a boy with a brindled dog on a leash running home ahead of a storm, a gray couple scraping their chairs back under a peeling awning, a woman in all black propping her front door deftly open with a hip as she picks a package up to bring inside. The box contains a living, self-reproducing consciousness vacuum-sealed in a pouch. She will give it a holy yet common name and drink what its body creates: electronic birds. You wake a second time. The shape the sheets assume after you've risen, dressed, and stepped through the room, is a topographic study: a minor family of crumpled cordillera, some knobby hillocks, and a rolling plain promising sustenance.

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Copyright © 2020 F. Daniel Rzicznek All rights reserved
from Cherry Tree
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission