Upper Well

Farther
through the abandonment
of olives and gray
splintered boards
sun weathered
lichened

brush that has apples
mulberries
vetch covered road

through bay thicket
black mud again
gray leaves
beneath light gray trunks

A well
covered with a shed
corrugated steel
dark
Redwood plank wet
with blue-gray mud
under water
mineral hard

It tastes gray
like rocks
like frailty




--Avocet, 2006