Disquiet

An ominous wind was blowing
from the east,
down from the mountain.

It kicked up newspaper
and soda cans
like tumbleweeds.

The air was electric.
It was
daring forks to jump into sockets,
and those perturbed forks of fate were, in turn,
daring the children of the neighborhood
to stand on their roofs, offering
lightning rods to the unforgiving sky.

Around the corner, a stray dog
was eating trash from a can
that had been knocked over by the wind.
Eerie marks of the beast
in common canine
delicatessen.
It was an irrational terror.

A random fear
like the sound of hoofs outside of your bedroom door
at night
or
waking up to find that everything you have ever known
is made out of clay,
for your friends and family had thumbprints
on them
where their faces once were.
They are from the place
where the fingers of their creators
played with them too hard.

The dread farmer collected honey moths to begin eating up
everyone's sense of things like a skin harvest on a mission.

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day
termites start at the feet.

It took me ten years to gather the courage to write the next ten lines:
When I was younger
I had a nightmare that the last thing
I would ever hear on this earth
would be a single beep.
I couldn't sleep for days.
I watched TV at night
so I wouldn't sit in the chilling disquiet
waiting for
BEEP
and then nothing ever again.

The storm was coming.

The hills
melted away from a river
that had been collecting acid from
paper mills
for too many hundreds of years.

The hills
melted away from the river
like the spine collects nerve
before it separates from the body
to drag itself across rain soaked pavement.

The dread farmer heard the rooster crow
and began combing the fields
for silence.