so on the non-winding way home

hastened vineyard rows, mustard calf-hide-hills, fingerprints parched in blue contours.

it seems somebody’s rolling grapes between powder-tepid thumbs and forefingers, / baptizing fleshy pulp upon velvet mount bases. / above, there’s a sheer moon in daylight—a tracing paper face. / drawn in imperfect likeness, certainly, yet / while grass shoots capsize and invert on the roadside, / their dead grassroots brown in lukewarmth. / you see, when heat is choked down to its fever core, it alights on the tongue. / this, i know. /

so i know too that my toes are defrosting in a sink somewhere. / at home, maybe. / in glazed hours they must melt their laces; / they must / sit and mangle and rot, / milk fat frothing at their folds when they declare frostbite, lesions / foaming like the hills. / burgeoning. / bruised. / if they yield till the numbing fades, might i be whole again? /

so i know; / i know now that it won’t be long before a flood is waiting for me at home. / i know too that it won’t be long before the new air in my lungs is drowned and gone. / but / before i go, let me whisper out the car window how / untouched jungle roots might devour that cabin christened “post office” if they remain pristine. / how i wish i knew the speed at which / grass / grows. /