There is a moth the size of Turkey
    spreading its gauze across your nape

    while I wipe pear sap from my spine.

    A square of green blinks open
    a linen corridor beside the moon.

    A ponytailed girl stoops to pee
    without the light.

    All these lives, I stick my fist in,
    like a grover before the caterpillars regroup.

    A television up the row splashes
    bug light on my walls

    and I think
    how strange, before, the blue sky
    seemed to strangle the cottonwood's

    downy crotch it splayed at noon
    while standing on its head.

    And the happy dreams they wagged
    were fluffy, unplanned farms.

    

    On the lake yesterday two dogs bobbed
    beside a log while the hippies sucked pot

    and we swam out, each by each
    past sentinel weeds
    that grabbed us and hid.

    We stroked, over secret sealanes
    where bubbles bit us:
    Kisses from deep fishes we longed to touch.

    

    Down, to Atlantis you flickered an instant,
    and I tracked you like warm lightning.

    You bassooned, Fast!
    Like a canoe
    off oar and fishpole legs.

    More cotton broke backs on the beach
    then water nippled near

    to minnow your head close suddenly
    like a miniature in a fisheye lens.

    

    I followed you in again,
    past grabbing weeds and round rocks

    past two black women laughing
    at the stones they grabbed

    laughing that they clacked the stones together
    before dropping them to the mud...

    

    On the coarse sand is
    a large wool flowered blanket
    that smells of winter

    Where we spread our cold bodies together.

    There is a baby
    wading to its breeches in the froth.
    It screams at the cold licks and log

    and stones and sky

    while the mother sets a pair
    of shoes in the sun to dry

    beside a white rabbit
    and photo of Elvis.

Copyright © Juli A. Kroll, 2001.  All Rights Reserved.