The blackbird rain bubbles
You slug
A beer, barefoot in the mud,
Your hem soaking in cloth-melting brown
Somehow cleaner than its tired
Yellowing century flowers.
Maybe the salt has slimed
In fizzing traces along the stems
As they dissolve to dead slug sludge.
(Hands slide under the sticky wet wrinkles
Only trembling and sighing in mercury fusion.)
The leaves are dim and their posed smiles
Somehow blurred— Their curves used to be as stiff as uncles
With their black insect hats;
Now the legs wave in drug-powdered sleepiness
In the quiet hands on a blossom’s head

So tiny, so wet.
You wrapped up the stain,
Pulling its edges from the floorboards
And origami-carefully folding it.
It sleeps in a pink lace box— You glued photos of roses and
Dead women on the sides.
But as you crouch in the green here
No matter how hard
You pry
The puddle won’t fold.

We’re all getting older, you reflect
On your rocking-chair lawn,
The wet grass knitting around slugs,
Maybe if we sit in the rain long enough
We’ll dissolve.

by Elodie Olsen Coons