Nectarine Scarecrow

---

Engine soul of autumn gone

Spring on the precipice

The green, the warmth

The birthing forth of old new life

I sit in a tree with a yellow journal

Scratching ink into paper

As the sun shines like a nectarine in the sky

The leaves chime green notes

There’s a stream in the valley

It meanders like a man on the moon

It rattles like shards of blue time

I see life in a flurry

All the people in such a hurry

Running back and forth

Just trying to live

I see the ocean of flowers on the horizon

On the grand shelf with the timepiece shaped like Napoleon in a war suit

I see the scratchy red canyons

The blissful white streaks, the drifting salmon bands

The strata of compressed shellshock and fortune-telling sand

Taking hits of helium at the dry creek bed

Like a ravaged, bad-ass cowboy of old

Strangled, crooked trees for blood life canopy

Trying to make fire with two rocks and a comet

Getting higher, lighter

Floating like a barbaric straw man

Snagged on a lighthouse

A scarecrow at sea

Rough clouds shouldering in

Like school hall bullies

The rain thunders

The lightning is wet

There’s a man in a rubber suit

Riding a bolt of Thor

I’m drowning in dystopia

It’s so late outside

But I’m afraid to dream.