Tranquility Pike
       

A flash across the windshield at late day
or in the morning can make a wreck.

So if you drive here try to be as patient
as a cat waiting for a door.

You know you are helpless.
Last winter I was covered up—snow

for three weeks can dazzle. The kettle
whirred for coffee until I ran out.

I lived on tomatoes cooked quick with salt.
(We are pure blood around here.)

I'm not lonely. Heat and rain breed many weeds.
I've been sober as a bell at midnight—

is that a phrase? My talk show host has been gone,
captured in fact. His band plays a familiar waltz

and then it's morning, the heat swallows
the valley, soaks the blacktop, rises

like a camphor from the road and so I wait
on this rain and then it pours and pours.

It hits in my head and I tell myself,
This isn't the kind of rain that answers questions.

Could I take my wrong moments,
set them to some tune? If you need flannels,

I'll send you a bagful.
Give them to people you meet under street lamps.

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Copyright © 2015 Joshua Butts All rights reserved
from On New to the Lost Coast
Gold Wake Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission