fall fugue

by Wade Linebaugh

the pebble in my mouth
tastes like chalk,
an acrid river-rock
culled from the bed of earth’s strangest river.
i sympathize with it.  i feel chalky, too.
& so i turn into a rock, flutter fast down

& i’m in a field one moth’s -flight
from life, young people.
where the grass twists
with garageband hiss
& lilting strains
of broken voice, broken boy.
i see the moths,
not fooled in this field,
they make a pulsing, flapping cloud.
i can’t flap, but i pulse (as near
as rocks can do) & pulse:

what sort of sky
could brace this cloud? what
kind of rain could it rain?