Adhere, put on place where the power runs,
Where the refugees once huddled and now live.
Brazen with identity, all disagreements,
Sporadic as shelling, as bombs,
Mud, craters and first drafts.

Thrown out and blowing down the plastic road
And the crossing of the glass alley.
Eye of glass, prosthetic mind, touchable everywhere
But hidden as reluctant as a smile.
Miles and miles of tall corn, stubby squashes,
Pomegranates of the tropical mind flowering in pink seeds
And growing along the ditch, asparagus.

Along your bangs, eyebrows responsive to rise or fall,
A downpour rubbing road grease and oil,
Tread marks and puddles.
Careful driving – flowers everywhere.
Taking up your cause, your ruck sack and marbles,
Pans, corpus collosum separating the hemispheres,
The haves and not having more.

Settling in to silence and dark before the movie starts,
Before your flickering eyes, reaching out for light,
Dim as numen, plentiful, respectful, frugal
But able like the grass to grow almost anywhere.
The freeway median, the medium in her little blue tent,
The injury tent – looking inward, looking out as all about,
The barbs and stickers of wilderness work like erasure and track us
Like lambs by our blood.
Like wolves by our speed,
Our merger lights blinking.

Are we killers or victims, both or neither?
Another place, some other time, this is the only time for this today.
This day is only once and the race is on quietly
Like the moon across the sky,
Her secret thoughts dwelling below the lashes
By the grasses of brooks burbling turns of depth
With barely a ripple of the pull, the flow slower
And far below waves, as water sometimes moves as a smooth surface,
A little endless path of source and sea.

Trouble not the wisp of hair you touch,
The back hand of a smile in converse with what might be a look
At you from some other.

By Rolf Stavig
2/03/2024