Years in the bottom scum
of local cow ponds,
wriggling free of former
selves, learning new ways
to breathe-till they rise
in unison before a dawn, unable
even to feed, between their brad
heads and split tail-hairs
new wings that drive
each female to charge
a wandering black cloud of
mates that looks as though
it could jam horsepower.
Under them frogs dance
and splay, tonguing air
to get up where birds
work the swarm’s crackling edge
before its passion fails
to a carbon fall.
Let the great trees look down
and judge from their hill
above the school how close it comes
to the May evening
a cloud of color swirls
in that cafeteria.
Prom night: plenty inside
would tell you that school
and this one-cylinder town
are like life under water,
the whole cycle. But tonight,
trailing sherbet colors
and scents those colors might have
all over town, they seem taller
than last year, as around them
parents set off flashbulbs . . . .
Here I will let analogies fail,
not say what mothers and fathers
and teachers are like,
but drop such connections into
the mind of Jimmy, town drunk,
where they will spin and grow wet,
leaves on a pool awhile,
which drift, sink, decompose as
he watches from those trees.
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