somewhere between poem and stream, for national poetry month

Amus Thal she/her 

It was you, Amus Thal, who never got
the shirted pall down over your face
so they never recognized grace

[Recognize your blame. Understand them. Don’t complain]

while it softly, coolly granted time,
met them in familiar halfways,
always arriving.

They are broken wavelengths,
nerves connecting to their own ends,
to avoid certain death and disconnect—
how brave the cold. How buried the true dead
emotions

They tastemakers never swallow
Nothing reaches past the salt lick/ prairie
dogs wait out the spitten rain in
airy angled pockets just above their level of content

You never wanted to be their dog—
rodential underminer of brutal fields—
chased out to run among heels and mown
meadows; they blink and cross a surface nurturance,
in simulations spurred by spire and spite,
for fields of rest dere served, by Thal Amus—

As inspiration thunders—
emptying buckets of dead-of-night,
preparing to treat the roots and dendrites
with what serves them just fine