Ranch Light

   A   Absence is a he-man who stalks 

        experience, hoping it will turn 

        innocence inside out. Listen 

        to me listening to you from the floor 

        glutted with grain. The rain is full 

        of finches that enclose the sound 

of explanation. Luck of hesitation. 

Is there such a thing as luck? Honey mint 

of hangman's glow. The whispered eminence 

of a bureaucrat denuded of the slow 

wheels. You can drive for miles and see just miles

in a line, never the whole cloud coming

undone at last. Thin cast of gray light 

feeding from the east a slow-moving storm.

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