Of This

And so traverses, gun in hand, the creek.
We on the other side waiting dreamily
as for a wave. The head of the tree 
is heavy. The pears are not ripe.
I do not dare look up, seeing as 
the day has splurged against my face 
and you are on the other side 
where the grid breaks into tiny oracular 
tiles, wafer thin, distorted, pale.
The huge sound is mechanical, not
expressionistic: things 
into other things, exploding. 
The serial furthers.
Were you wearing a sombrero or
just a hood to keep hot chords
from your skin? Serial, as in many 
tunes, many kills, weeping
additions and accumulating, dry
remainders; the cost of endurance. 
 

Copyright © 2017 by Ann Lauterbach. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 3, 2017, by the Academy of American Poets.