#18

Traintracks crossing the hill
like stitches on a skull,
I'm writing your name
in a tree trunk with a switchblade
under the howl of coal.

I am here and nowhere, a shadow
on the car, watching pitchfork
orchards blur into a veined blur,
the inside of a kaledioscope filled
with orange, with bark, with leaves.

I'm writing your name
on this tree to pull attention away
from the words written in the dirt,
in brown slate wedged between
the roots of this angry tree,

its knots screaming to the train.