By Ted Vanderveldt

Monday
3/26/07
11:02 pm

I can only count ten stars
then I stop
because they start to spin
and it is too hard to concentrate.

wind rattles leaves.

I love it lying here
but the sticks and balls from the sweet gum tree
hurt my back.

cars pass and toss empty cups and
the bags from fast food restaurants
into the grass in front of my house.

the red streak of a flicked cigarette butt.

I get up to look at the tulips by the gate
but the night has eaten their color.

I sit on the steps in front of my door
and my eyes fall to the grass beneath that tree
there I imagine a rectangle of turned dirt
with my body 6 feet beneath it.

the roots of that sacred tree worming through the
soil to wrap themselves around my bones
crack them open and suck the marrow.

moonlight and my rattling ghost up in the branches.