All night, it precipitated through the black
leaves, a syncopated dilution. Let me tell
you: I enjoy a chaos - how it declares:

Forget it. I pulled my knees closer, pulled
my hat down over my face, listened:

slab upon slab of wet, and anything that
crawls, that flies, waiting. In the morning,
you can’t help but look up, half

expecting a hole. Somehow, the canopy
has rearranged itself, the shape of a

silence. To me, the ground: a tangle of
termites, but I am not famished. Instead,
I gather thin white corollas newborn.

Thousands of them, sprouted between
the end of the downpour, the red rise of

morning. And glistening. The rule is to
fill your rucksack, and eat everything in
excess. I gather an armful, leave room

for the hope of a quail, later today. I fill
my mouth with the nutty bodies of

these apparitions, these ghostlike gills.