Waking Up in Kansas

You begin by assuring yourself, I can
tell this story... how easily the hill
sloped down to the garden like a giant
breast, the way sky hovered
over it- purple and swollen,

the sound of the windmill's
three-jointed- fingers, steel
bones glued together by rust,
the squash vines of Kansas
coiled up in its gut, the bells

of its flower tinted black...
in the skull of night, eyes
of clouds rolled back, the whites
flickering anemic fierflies
caught in a child's trap,

the smell of root, worm-warm
soil, clovered and moist as steam
rising up from the drinking well or
ghost-like haze pluming the pond
lifting its dark, heavy face.

A single cock, a rooster whose feather
shines and glows morning's favorite
colors- yellow, white and silvered-gold,
proud and dusty and old as the windmill
that woke him up... begins to crow.