subtext

I can’t, or won’t, maintain focus

anymore. I’m listless.  A morning

mist hangs in the dank summer air;

the heat already pervades the deepest

parts of shade like brown tarps draped

over abandoned farm machinery.

I drift along my mind’s flows;

memory traces fall like leaves

into a creek’s slow meander:

scraps from forty, fifty, years ago

blend with the poem I read last,

or the latest gossip down the street;

swirl in an eddy momentarily

then diffuse along other patterns.