Lichen Still

Lichen Still

Scraped in my fingers

leaf-litter prickles my palm…

it flexes and springs and

sultry salts fill my face 

Trees virr and voan

with the compulsive beat

of a lichen-still land -

mocked by crows that drown the vending van bells

Dark soil under my nails

is a dank and staining herbal brew

the pungent overtone

signals me to thumb it out and stride on

I wander bee-staggered,

tumbling between summer’s last caress

and the pale threat of snow

In a shower of crunchy beechnut husk,

I slither down a bank

raising dusty trails that float like spores

A clattering squirrel winds a clockwork tree

and the nobodiness of nowhere

completes the isolation, and

invokes my emptiness

My pocket-watch ting-tangs

in the stillness

time - that obsolete dimension,

is blind to where I’m shifted…

being undisturbed

by the hungers of the soul