This Is When We Tire of the Whole Kit-&-Caboodle

Five trees -- pecan, red oak, cedar, live oak, & magnolia --
shade my left hand every time I walk to where I teach
composition and literature to students who don't know
the names of trees.

I stand akimbo in a classroom
waving a ragged fan of red oak leaves
& a duster of cedar needles. I dance
like a catfish flopping in a flat-bottom boat,
sing like a crow, croon like a mockingbird.

Don't ask why you want to know my name.

Don't ask.

Don't wait for me to push you off that cliff,
the one from which you wish to soar into clouds
you drew on butcher-block paper for seventeen years.

I'm somewhere over there,
beyond a flotilla of cumulus freighters,
skimming winds you never see but only feel,
wide-winged and swooping with
the simple things of the spirit
that breathe the smallest dust mote
down to the singular dream.

I'm on my way,
and I'm listening to "Mary Jane's Last Dance"
and thinking about tomorrow when
we tire of screwing up. We tire of this town
again, tire of these hot summers & cold
winters necking in my lady's car.

We tire of the whole kit-&-caboodle.