Three Things I Don't Know

I don’t know why

That sprinkler

Pieced together from parts

Salvaged out of last year’s junk

That to begin with

Didn’t cost me nothing

Now spraying an 80 foot radius

From a 300 foot well

Through a 5 horse submersible pump

That ran out of warranty two years ago

Taps a melt fed aquifer

Shared by too many retirees

Erupts Into the morning sky

Spewing prismed color

Burying twenty worm pecking

Red Winged Black Birds one

Pheasant hiding in the tall grass

And my hopeless lawn in rainbow

Takes my breath away

I don’t know why

The neighbor’s barbed wire fence

That never keeps the black and brown

Faced cows and calves out of my yard

That threatens electric shocks

If I get distracted mowing

Has to remind me of a million

Black and brown faces

Pressed to fences of

Electrified barbed wire and

Make tears come.

I don’t know why

A voice

That speaks before sunrise

With tongues

Untranslatable

Voice more felt than heard

Meaning more whispered than spoken

Soft as the edges of the emerging earth

Soft enough to be submerged completely

In the rising hum of bees

Blankets sleepers and

Makes me want to

Sing.

LFM