Call of Nature
By a lake where setting suns
bob up and down like oranges,
a driver gets down from his bus,
dents the desert with his knees
and with a holy yodel starts to pray.
On the bus a small girl lifts
a purple frock above her waist, hoists
her elfin buttocks to the window
and irrigates the desert
with an arc of twinkling rain.
Inches from the man at prayer
it settles like a necklace in the sand.
Horrified, her mother swings
two squawking chickens at her head.
The driver looks up, mystified:
not a cloud in sight and yet
such orange rain...
The girl, her face eclipsed
by clouds of angry feathered hair,
smiles a small white butterfly
that hovers briefly, pulsing
like a white hole in the air.
"There you are," it lullabies
the moment with its whisper.
"That's all you need to know.
Everything's a miracle.
Everything brings shame."
Then she and her smile are gone,
the bus moves on,
and chickens mutter with concussion.
Chris' excellent new collection, In Transit, was published by Pindrop Press this year.
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