The train's familiar whistle
and the foghorn's high bass note under it
make a chord as I drive
along the river, my windows down
under a low, cut on the bias moon
as it moves like a slug
keeping the time
in the late August sky.
I had tried to sow what I wanted
to reap: carrot, turnip, beet
rat-tailing into their rows,
but one rule is you may not enhance
the lie and I had tried to enhance the lie.
A couple of mallard lift off
the surface of the slug trail
river into their flight
of fancy. In the deepest
decolletage of the mind I know
that this is right.
I take my exit too fast, and think
of a worm, its slow exit wound out of
the apple it is done boring through.