Rich In Flesh

The river and the hills

flush with dark haze. 

     Rained half an 

hour ago. At forty-five miles per hour

the countryside in the southern purgatory

of the north

courses like water across the windshield. 

A billboard from nowhere

quotes the Old Testament--"use the rod

against thine children." But we pass that

and a swarm of wet atoms curls into

a flabby column of spray, to bear it away. 

     

Cows dot the green swells 

on either side of the interstate. Like

                      gargantuan ticks.

Sucking ohm juice from the humps. 

Grass like low-growing fire, trees 

heavy and damp; farm and farm

and rock exposed to grazing bellies 

of dark clouds… air dashes against the grill

to clear that old mile-wide inch in my head: 

                   silence exposed. 

The equally old equation 

I used to dress and lay bare 

for the sake of keeping track of it.

Sounds removed from self

like needles from a 

     

              sympathetic doll

leave quiet. Then selves 

removed from quiet

      lighten it to 
                a balloon of silence. 

Silence the breath inside and not the latex, 

a noun perched atop a tree of adjectives,

neurons oscillating at 40 megahertz per second

      naked of creature content. 

That contradicting velocities reveal:

speeding past different rates of slowness

that make the eye say "tree", "barn", "fenceline". 

This is what it'll be like. Running from rivers. 

Sound from self, self from quiet, 

     and quiet, like a last support, 

from arms, legs, heart lungs and body.

When the head lowers and chlorophyllic ovens

open to blow ashes off its whimper. 

And inaudible land lays out on all sides 

not deigning to touch it.