CARNIVAL.

Your eyes, green as the bluegrass, 

drowning in the moon-pulled tides 

as the bass slides like mud and 

a cricket-cantor creaks up: sound 

bursts like a whip-poor-will with a 

woodgrain Ozark battle cry,

the Alabama nocturne of the 

carnival - I am gone - 

Feeling the reel, 

I hold your waist for dear life,

terrified of losing counting

breath as the stars turn.

Drunk in love and alive, I

dream to the empty bottles,

the short-cut shorts, and the

trees where the spruce-

notes roost; I dream for you.

I wrote this at some point in the summer of 2011.