Rat Among the Pines

Roger Reeves | 133 Terror, tonight Is the moon Slipping from a rat’s gray grasp, Finding its way back Into the sky, which is America— A white moon Leaning on the night’s neck With its hands in its pocket, Moon hung calm above Catastrophe, the police Breaking the neck of a man Who had just brushed summer’s First bead of rain from his eye-­ Lashes. Who—knocking a Newport Against a wrist, watching smoke Break its head against a brick Wall—is preparing to die Unaware they are preparing to die. Heavy the moon, silly the tasking poetry Rat Among the Pines Roger Reeves 134 | Roger Reeves Of a rat with delaying death. Terror, tonight Is the candor of the earth Where someone is preparing to die And the earth receives that dying With its hands in its pockets. And the moon that once burnt the silk Hump of a rat, back in the sky. And my daughter hiding in the rose Bushes, asking who, who the sirens Have come to kill. And someone calling It beautiful—summer, moon— And someone dying beneath that beauty, Which is America. ...