winter blowing out
while summer blows in
darien says about the wind as
the six of us
fork/scrape the winter mulch from the beds
tenderize the soil
dig up the path to the right and cover it with pummies
while the weather whips up the dried leaves from the neighbors trees
and hurls them up, beyond our hair-whipped faces, into sky
_______
even with all that wind
the burst of sun works us
down to our tshirts
in no time
_______
rooster head
on the pebble path
near the back porch door
_______
i don’t want to see a dog with its skin off trish says
while we trip across fallen branches in the post-dusk dark on the overgrownness called canada road
talking about the most brutal/vulnerable? part of
working with the raccoon (the skinning)
_______
to watch lightning
as it blooms and fades and crackles across sky
over/around us
during a short loop walk
that ends just before the downpour
(there is never any part of me that doesn’t want to watch a storm roll in and out
and i rarely get to see one like this
360 degree view
while the wind shakes the trees around us
how there is some orange/pink in the dark dark sky
that only the lightning reveals
how some of the lightning lights up entire clouds
while other bolts are a scratch of light
rippling around us)
_______
this is not death i think (the layers of paint, the variation of woodgrain, the mismatched plates and hand-thrown ceramic mugs, the patterns of dirt dried on the garden tools before scraping and all the other visual textures that sandhill farm life is constructed of)
in contrast to the previous thought i had (that was a death) (upon recalling the flat officey carpet in the room poetry readings were sometimes held and the plastic purple-padded chairs which were most likely made in prison that filled aforementioned room, the aforementioned room’s wall of windows and set of double doors that were to remain closed and the view of the concrete courtyard filled with ferns that have most likely never seen a rainforest. perhaps the only variation in the aforementioned room: two gigantic potted plants i simultaneously wanted to liberate and never wanted to look at again)
_______
sometimes it is impossible to believe i live in a world
where $246 rolls of toilet paper exist (and are used)
while, without sounding cliche, folks live on the street and are criminalized for it
and people are dying because they don’t have access to/can’t afford to eat
opulence at its sickest
a. – voice of america, day in photos
detail collector 
