The ire of summer heat through the glass
of my car, driving past highway construction
and what once was a deer, now melted
into bones on the pavement. Trees mowed down
in a scarred church lot, the sign for a new building
with the wood chipper beside it.
And then the driveway hedge, so alive with bees
I could not see the difference between them
and the speckled buds. And the dragon fly,
still and crystalline on the back of my hand
in the shallow river rife with chemical foam.
And the spade-shaped toad carrying its child
through the freshcut lawn. And my hand against
the Black Ash, still here, somehow.
— KIPP DE MAN
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