earth note 77

i lifted my poems from the bottom
of a kayak and fed them to a manta ray
off bahia honda beach florida keys

buried them with sand dunes & crabs
near provincetown

the negev sun ate the print
right off the page
leaving an emptiness as long as
brown barren canyons

still good enough to wipe oil
off a dipstick
acid new jersey ain't no freeway

i'd like to compost them
inside the rotting stumps of the alleghenies

before i'd strip away the soul
deconstruct
sanitize them
for the academics

maybe it's time to pack up the originals
and walk those 500 miles
to my mother's headstone

--- e b bortz

(published in earth notes and other poems, Least Bittern Books, 2015)