Pretty Collages, Misbegotten Plans

Long rumbles of thunder. Obeisant roadside daisies. Antique tractors and my late father's checkbook. When you shorten things, you hurt them, you fall for the devil's lie that convenience is a virtue, and thus cause pain (this is how the devil works didn't you know). The ruined bodies of birds colonized by nesting maggots tossed into tall grass just shy of the forest. Casting for trout on the Deerfield River near the Vermont border, remembering a brief phase of living where I took photographs of the moon and turned them into pretty collages. Misbegotten plans for what my body will do given certain ideal circumstances, i.e., that old confusion around sex and death. Stop, listen: my dead aunt is speaking, the one who wore men's clothes, smoked a pipe, and bragged about cheating on the night before her wedding. Asparagus spears, smoked hocks. I only liked Led Zeppelin twice but no joke, when I liked Led Zeppelin I really liked Led Zeppelin. The blue hills of Massachusetts are dusk headed west. Oh tell me again professor in that dulcet voice with that faraway look in your feline blue eyes: what did Emily Dickinson say about one sword per scabbard?