Clouds mock themselves across the water,
in a home-barn herding, evaporations that must arrive in rain.
 
A red sassafras leaf floats on the surface like a hand 
blessing the flow and fall, the swirl and eddy,
 
the way shine hopes from a wilderness of rust.      
She finds her feet on the stream’s sandy shoal.
 
This escape is a mirror of feeling, of all that she 
could have said. She lowers her eyes, a sounding,
 
     through depths crayfish cuddling mud
                 have forgotten.  In riffles and babble,
 
the rolled stones are patient: the grind of heart
is not emptiness. She knows the tree
 
appears of greater length standing than when lying 
on the ground. Love has betrayed her and the evidence
 
            is moth holes in sweaters, boxes checked
            on health history forms, the puncture of silent letters
 
in a sentence of distress. Floating naked in this sorrow
is impossible except as she may imagine—she drinks
 
            of solace, self-forgiveness in this recognition;
            she drinks from cupped hands her waiting face.
                        

At our village crossroads—
Main and Court Streets—
a red baseball cap is run over
and over and over like roadkill.
 
The acronym identifies a cult
of belonging, a contagion, a code
for Don’t-Tread-On-Me anger.
Our common ground is bloodied.
 
In the afternoon thunderstorm,
the red Made-in-China color runs.
 
The hat without a head floats
toward the gutter like the secret 
handshake of a malevolent cause, 
white letters unraveling.
 
Next morning it is swept up
as trash, is buried in the landfill
of our history, our common ground
is again the center of town