Flycatcher

Tractors and Tulle

I
Carded wool
whispered into lint—
Specular mountain
chafing the plain’s
rolling vertebrae

Prairie brome early
to bloom it bows
its crispy earrings
to the prayers
of grasshoppers

look closely
and see a beetle
climbing to the edge
of a blade of bluestem.

II
Boring, they say,
with no ocean;
hills are bumps, trees
like . . . dots.

Tell me what happens
when Gulf meets Jet—
hot-and-cold running
special effects
by Buddy Gillespie
somewhere in Technicolor?

Tractors and Tulle
projecting through acreage—

pirouettes in plié,
performed by God
goading the chasers
to lift His skirt.

The sight is magnificent:
nimbused by
coils raping
the Earth—

Better take cover,
dig down deep
to search
for the subtlety
you lack within.

III
And when
it’s all over,
bodies splayed

along the northeast
corner of 50 and J,
 
I have this message,
snob from the coast—

“passer-by” from Boston
who thought
you could pass
the axial flow
in the midst of
a storm:
 
the sky has no
limits on our soil—
We’re your inspiration,
whether you know
it or not.