Damaged Enough
       

I still my heart and I can hear you,
the laughter they have in the sun.

I picture the raft rolling on the waves a speedboat made.
I hear you on your trampoline near your garden

with the water off and all the transparency in place
to cue the world for the next instance of now.

This was all there was to importance, I suspect.
You are petting the black kitty

though she is so wary,
you in your striped shirt,

holding up the dead squirrel for show.
The world is not damaged enough,

though your mother sighs as she says
what's it all coming to,

going to the dogs
as a mottled stray yelps down the street

chased by the future suicide's hotrod 55 Chevy
with the chrome header and fat rear tires.

Your door slams directly below,
and I know exactly where the past is now

as your mother fries up the taco shells
and sprinkles salt on the daikon radishes.

I am forever sun-warm cement, and you
are spraying water from a hose.

The sun will soon end the day,
but we are not through with it yet.

There is another light to match,
another scarecrow to burn in the human tree.

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Copyright © 2014 Rustin Larson All rights reserved
from Bum Cantos, Winter Jazz, & the Collected Discography of Morning
Blue Light Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission