Today's poem is by Huan He

spiderghost
       

a fog in air finding its lover in the mist, boys teeter
looking for dandelions in fields of dewy weeds,

plucking and prodding their yellow faces and
chopping off the heads with the finger-snap of

a sorcerer; then clustered by the anthill, shirts
wet with the sun, stroking a dare to see what

would happen if you stuck a match into the
crevice, if the ants would eat the fire, if the dirt

would open in curiosity, if the land would
remember; puffs float as witnesses, spiders in

the wind, each a wish escaped to nowhere
but the spring skin of brown sugar on honey;

in the thick thin weather of cotton, us in a
trick-house mirror when boys wear faces of men.

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Copyright © 2023 Huan He All rights reserved
from Sandman
Diode Editions
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission