Farmstand in Freestone, First Rains

The flowers and vegetables seem as if they should be rotting, but they haven’t. Not yet.    Rain has

slipped into the farmstand,         fog too, so that the view of the collapsing sunflower field,         full

of man-bodied yellow-headed flowers, is wet,    and the particulars wet, too,      the color spectrum

of zinnias, as is the smell, wet,         which under the pressure of the storm rises               earthy and

quiet enough to be dug up         like dreams of nameless people touching you                         as       if

they loved you. Wet.            Water between layers of paper-skins encasing tomatillos       and garlic,

bags of shishitos swimming in condensation.     Metal buckets holding slumped flowers-        nearly

black dahlias and love-lies-bleeding-amaranth-        flow over, so that the shack feels        as if a river

had come         and gone,            each kabocha squash having ridden currents,       fanning the fluvial

with hand-shaped green leaves         while a few split open,          their bright floating moon innards

dipped in turmeric. Wet.                     Across the street, the bakery closed,          the great brick oven

abandoned                                 through the length of windows,              wooden bread peels hanging

like witches’ brooms,         sturdy tables for loaves (built by young men forty years prior)        wiped

clean of flour and sesame seeds and stray shiitake         (the men likely dead,         or home reading-

the same type of forgotten).         Between farmstand and bakery,                  a form in the road, wet,

at first indistinguishable from a possum, or a racoon,        the pelting of the pelt having leeched the

color out,         the asphalt shining, glaring even,         everything dull against it, except for the body,

which is smashed and gruesome           in the way that organs and bones                     press together

into a new shape of leaving.                                Still,                             two pink ears refuse flattening,

instead they listen to cars driving over their own carcass,         they listen         to the bellies of giant

mechanical beasts         with no faces, no ears         of their own to hear         blackbirds,          or the

one warbler who is singing         as if it were spring         and not the first rains,        the one warbler

instead singing           to the morning happenings            (these happenings in the shape of a friend,

the old friend of routine       that would miss the rabbit so much                                  that the whole

world would weep)                        as sprigs of scallions                      and golden egg zucchini go soft,

and the strung marigolds                        go brown in this wetting,                                         destroyed.