Fire and Rain along hilltops, or by shallow coastal waters, the air so still wind farms in their pegboard placements, the turbines stalled in Quixotic postures yet another heat wave jockeys for position smoke from wildfires, charred-acre ash, lifted miles at the whim of thuggish weather, settling on the windows on the leaves of the
1917 sprays of poppies, as in the first line of a poem the flush of spatter reds, nonchalant along ditches braced for gas rounds and bubbling lungs fire-step volleys at Arras punctuate routine advances, inch by inch the dawn attack the mirror of the falling-back low, raking rounds a timely barrage a biplane nosedown in
Noir there was always a cat, never there long enough to have a name and because of that the more admired there was always a woman, in a fix through no fault of her own balling her fists like the closeup of street vendors pulping lemons there was another woman, who kept a secret there
