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Rail track Vagabond

By Aaron Suranofsky

Beetles mine your skull
for consciousness crust.
Ants sheer off blood glued wedges 
of fur.
Worms inject out the ground’s skin
to clean any splotches contrasting the ivory.

Skeleton coiled to the tip of your tail
as if asleep in a den,
you lay flat
on wide open stones.

Why’s your little leg bent
a severed yard away?
Locked in potential energy–
potential jump to safety.

Did the whistle whip your ears like a chain,
your easy, bird-catcher muscles shocked?
Petrified on a wheel-gouged cleave of steel,
did your body quake
to the pulverizing metal stomps,
heavier, louder, blasting over–

with only enough time
to internalize the danger.
With too many hours
to curl into the pain

where the tuft of fox pomp
wafted along 
a year ago;
springy meander
a hair heavier than air, floating
to a seated rest,
pluming a tail flare.
Its glance slacked on me
unimpressed.
A breath of orange igniting the tracks,
blown out by the nearby weeds.
Two Course Dinner by Pat Frantz Cercone

Filed Under: Nature and the Environment Feature

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