Touch the tears of trapped and cornered women
counting nickels for grocery money, while their husbands down another beer at the corner bar.
Smell the songs not yet written as the river sunset
burns in orange and red and waits for nightfall,or old modal tunes soaked into weathered wood porches.
Taste the wind which fails to rustle through August afternoons
as someone searches for a scrap of shade beside a now-gone mountain.
Ease weary feet, heavy inside steel-toed boots at 6 PM
on the hottest day of the year.
Understand the curve of a yellow tulip, filled with fragrance,
the promise of pollen covered stigma, the gentle mourning in its bloom.
Ignore the skin of tomorrow thinning and thinning and thinning.
