Dancing Bears
As a child
I asked my mother
if the trees and telephone poles
really were connected
by iron wheels and twine,
pulled passed us by men
raised in the wild,
and stowed beneath the ground.
She said, yes, but in her day
they whispered as they ran
down the state highway
where they would stand together
and wait for a troop of dancing bears
fresh off the boat
from a village
outside Minsk.
Suburban Pastoral II
Chasing Tim
through the house and out into the garage
on the concrete floor stained with oil, littered with rugs and aluminum
he fired off his last barrage.
He closed the door just as I reached it,
and I, forgetting it swung only in,
pushed it
on its gypsy glass, until boy and window coupled in sin.
It was then that Tim and I were cast out into a splendid splintered starry night,
and as my arm reached through the pane and touched his nose
my look of rage must have mirrored his look of fright
because he turned tail and fled the garden on his 12-year old toes.
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