Short Order at Eli’s

In pulled pork I chomp down on ghost piglets
and tomatoes and feel the heat of tongue-loads
of crushed red seeds from some Mexican pepper,
swelling the saliva that tries to protect my taste buds;
a limber notion that Mississippi barbeque is not
even a close resemblance to barbeque anywhere else.
My lips, however, feel some hot sauce forming the fire
of Texas Pete or Hell’s Inferno ripping off skin
and clawing at my half-stopped throat till water
and ice, chugged quickly, chokes me;
to breathe, I shriek and gasp to inhale.
In one bite of “Our Famous Cajun Style”
Eli’s BBQ Grill House is a short order;
identity comes out to meet me,
sweat dripping out my forehead pores.

**

Sudden Afternoon Rain

A tin pan hammering at the edge of hearing;
a red-headed woodpecker banging on the gutter
in exact cadence to heavy rain on the metal roof.
The wind swirls mist across the river;
it curls the quivering tips of pin oak leaves
and pricks the summer steam rising from the road.
Sudden afternoon rain raises the river’s scent,
a gentle citrus odor rolling over the mossy rocks.
Crows crack and cackle their ratchet voices
raking the wet leaves as if digging for old bones
hidden in the entangled damp earth.
Come any afternoon–we like wild spirits
go running under tree branches;
as from above the music trickles down.

**

A Heron’s Landscape

You might hear the herons in the morning and help drag up
a lazy sun and hold it on the back of your neck,
watching the small ripples on the water with their sideways
reflection against the shape your dark shadow has found,
pressing soft footsteps into the river’s smooth sand
where there once had been only orange eyes and sound,
threading the memory of simple sounds from
every warm sunrise through the river birch branches
of your listening, its half-hidden voices whisper.

And in the evening, when the moon searches open swags
between the trees, smoothing the long saw grass
along the shoreline into tawny yellow corn silk waving
at the long-necked birds against a gray sunset,
the night music trickles down–thumping faintly
an ethereal spectral tune–at least for this time–real.

**

Fried Alligator – A Haiku Trilogy

Alligator bait
Floating knee-deep in green bogs,
Alluring the prey.

Orange moonlit eyes.
Burly hunters wait at night
Contemplate which one?

Dark shadows tremble
On the black water surface,
Fried alligator.

**

Three Yellow Moons – A Haiku Trilogy

It rises, it sets
A slow moon in winter’s sky
Yellow crystals glow

On frozen water
The moon reflects half yellow
Night falls on black ice

At the water’s edge
Reflecting dimly yellow
The moon companion