Odd: a scarecrow in the city,
on a raw rooftop of someone’s
simple-minded home of brick and
sweat equity, a scarecrow in
blue jeans and a red shirt able
to veil vague distances arrived.
The clouds add the white needed
to make these moments an abstract
American flag.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .A week later:
the scarecrow is gone—Canadian
winds? new ideology? My steps
lead to my address suddenly bare,
gravitas gone slumming. High school
never explained why zero was
invented. The Bible did say:
Just try to add one cubit to yourself.
Giants use a simple math: all mine.
Piazza
Sometimes I read a young poet
and I’m jealous not to still be that
young. I used to be addicted to
words like piazza and worked
for years to get my heart broken
in one. I did it. So many words and
adventures were still ahead of me.
Let the young “stitch the broken
world” for its their enemy and
not mine. I’ve been on top of
a lover and conjugated Spanish
verbs and I’ve borrowed a truck
to follow the moon into a poem.
Be glad the young are dangerous
as they learn the world is full of
wild mirrors that can be shattered.
Rane Arroyo’s latest poetry books are The Buried Sea: New & Selected Poems (University of Arizona Press) and Same-Sex Séances (New Sins Press). He lives and writes in Toledo, Ohio. He can be contacted at www.ranearroyo.com.
