Clade Song 9

Great Basin Spadefoot

to the great Utah right
a spade and boss streaks
in the ash-gray sagebrush
hourglass pinon-juniper
fir belt with an eye for
under and overpasses
through tunnels swimming
and fishing temporary
lakes off the Columbia
gazing the shore rehydrating
a crumpled spring underlain
bone in a dry burrow
to wawawa one chord 
assemblages of bilobed
Rocky Mountain
4th of July sparklers

 

 

Michael Rerick currently teaches and washes dishes in Portland, OR. Work recently appears or is forthcoming at COAST|noCOAST, Graviton, Mannequin Haus, Parentheses, Porridge, The Wire’s Dream, and Waccamaw. He is also the author of In Ways Impossible to Fold, morefrom, The Kingdom of Blizzards, The Switch Yards, and X-Ray.