Comatose with heat, the night slumps, <br />incubus over the clotted lake. Berserk <br />crickets, ubiquitous, chirr; <br />a frenzied moth pungs the screens. <br /> <br />No mail. <br /> <br />Crusts of lichen knit stone walls <br />and climb the shins of oaks stripped <br />to spine, their branches picked to a scrawl, <br />a barbed Saxon script. <br /> <br />Catalogues. One please remit. <br /> <br />The lake shuts in mastodon cold, <br />insipid as a pewter slide; churlish <br />winds dispute dominion <br />as difference dulls, congeals. <br /> <br />No mail. <br /> <br />Memory leaks. The salt lick <br />and hoof prints frozen by the lake <br />endure the malleting wind <br />chiseling ice into granite crags. <br /> <br />Two SASEs. No mail. <br /> <br />The larch sprouts leaves of morningales; <br />yarrow bobs in a rubbery field, and <br />the lake at play squirts sequined bass. <br /> <br />Mail. <br /> <br />Addressee unknown. Return to sender. <br /> <br />Wind scowls the lake, jouncing the pines, <br />lifts, like moths vaulting at night, <br />blinks of paper, exactly ripped.<br /><br />William F Dougherty<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/rural-free-delivery/
