High-Strung
       

I weave the night
from nothing in particular:
a rebellion against,
a trampling upon,
the instant before fight or flight.

Green blood in the culverts,
frogs high-jumping
from bank to medusa head—
an upended tree
slipped into the river by storm.
The end of days, where a man,
picnicking in a field fenced by poplars
loses his keys.

I am the metal detector
aimed at grass,
the potato bug curled like a fetus,
the slender branch
erupting from its swath
of blackberries and thorns,
stripped, excited by wind.

I am the green horse, the insomniac.
Always the same lesson,
studied and lost
like the man's keys,
the young woman
on hands and knees
searching a hectare for its purse.

When the moon's
just past full,
on the brink of autumn,
corn silk whispering
against leaves, I am the fist
and the money.

Go ahead, plant my feet.
The cliff falls away when you run
with your orange wings,
with the man on your back.
All you see below the ledge
can be taken like a pulse.

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Copyright © 2015 Judith Skillman All rights reserved
from Angles of Separation
Glass Lyre Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission