Andy Fogle
Thunder murmurs a county away,
and she tells the boy, Get your tail inside.
He’d tempt danger in the bathtub,
playing with his waterships, forget
how lightning can slip its way up the drain
and sliver the water into blue light.
He’d go sledding slaphappy in an icestorm,
if it ever got that cold here.
For now, it’s the caterpillars’ fine-haired
meander across the square of pavement
at the back door. It almost seems tame,
trusting his skin as ground, but at root
that thing is still wild as summer hail.
Thunder murmurs, but he drifts to the far
corner of the yard, by the shed the color
of jaundice, to the wobbly woodpile,
the fallen timber in this muddy patch,
lifts and flips an old stump, whispers to all
the low things that shine and writhe inside the world.
[Check out Andy Fogle's back porch interview]
