Ash Woods

[rowens]

Ash Woods


A yard like a garden,
no plants, statues
white and stone-chipped
as a two-decade memory,
surrounded by a chain-link fence,

through which seen to the west
through a haze of gnats
the frolic of the snake-doctor
flitting from charge to charge
amongst tattered green blades. 

And the east, the wreck of trees
like a puff of night,
soot and darkened stumps
over ground of unseemly white.
The loudest lack of former sounds.

Unmowed porcupines lean on
the cinderblock storage shack.
The footsteps are innocent
trekking this lowkey apocalypse,
easy through the time torn fence.
 
Companion never present,
elusive as a snark.
I'm my own glittery eyed pucka 
crouching silly-mouthed over
a patch of burnt magnolia.

I remember a former self
amongst other life
and live this present
to the boom of the nearest highway.
Sound.