Crud of Hills

Again, pathetically perhaps, by the same still pond
where the mallards sometimes settle, so lovely when
they come down, webbed feet like skis I cannot afford
cutting the surface of water for a headlong moment.

Particularly I smell cat shit today. Beneath this willow, the wind
has shifted to autumn’s gear, past the equinox
and beyond the burning months. Finally, I am localized
perhaps. In a way, this is all I have ever wanted.

That church in Oklahoma really seems far away, at last,
although alienation still sets into my bones like settlers
searching for crude oil on sovereign land.

The courts have confirmed; google maps now
reflects a slightly more decolonial reality, but the statesmen
and the corporations still crawl the crud of hills that grew me.

I meet, in a place which has just grown familiar, a longing for home,
my people in shanties, and those duller colors on sweeter trees.


Fear

Feeling I should sit here in the equalizing sun and sky
with the last of summer’s green, seedheads and harvest
and hope. Or at least turn toward what will come,
but there have never been such fires as have blazed
this hot season across forest and field; worry
for what may come lives in me like domestic rats
yet I cannot count too long or afford to dwell.
I haven’t earned the cash this week for worry so
this wind is sweet on my skin, and the particle sound
of children playing causes me to smile and look up.
I would not have believed I could so love a cloud
hadn’t love, through smoke, threatened me,
my gray cloud heart, my hermit heart sick with doom
applied to sun, though the sun has never changed.