UNDERGROUND STREAMS

Trampled hay leads to the woods;

Phantom hooves wander in the night,

Spell out make-shift paths through briars and thickets,

Follow veins of creeks and streams,

Linger by rain-carved gullies.

Passage into tangled depths;

Navigation through wild growth,

Where vines grapple with tree trunks,

Thorns dangle at eye level,

Fallen logs trip a foot, and

Poison oak touches the skin.

Jagged steps steer west,

Past shallow ditches with mica deposits,

Through insect swarms,

Copperhead crawl spaces,

Predators’ dens, hutches of prey;

Imprinted on the wayfarer,

Multitudinous copies consumed

In the shadows of back wood acres.

Carried out into streets,

Where cosmic explosions are mimed

In corridors of war

Fabric is slit

Bullet struck protoplasm desiccates.

At the end of the day

At the end of the hoof prints

Underground streams

Trickle slowly beneath footsteps and

Repeat the designs of all things.

© cmheuer, 2014

LITTLE POND

Rainwater ponds flood and evaporate,

A mirage of water that overflows its banks

Or disappears beneath the earth’s surface

With the slow crawl of an animal’s thirst.

Rising to the top of the dam,

Twice the size it should have been,

Overflow creeps into grasses and briar patches,

Floats logs, turtles, frogs, and water lilies.

Or sodden bed of leaf decay dried with

Muck-laden spatterdocks left aground;  

Broken spiny branches’ flailed arms prod mud and air,

And rotted, silver-plated tree trunks lie stranded.

Two ends of a pendulum’s arc, swing of time

Between rain and drought,

Between oasis and illusion,

Between face reflected and shadowed.

© cmheuer, 2014