All Over the Place: Summer and a Lawn

By Michael H. Brownstein

The wind a shovel of coal, scrubbed
land, mocking birds and a lost way,
whisk and twig, branch and bark, lance
and a book of matches within reach
on the end table. When you play

with matches, you do not always get burned.

Sometimes you are warmer because of them

and other times they mark the skin of your kora,
etch your shakaree, cut small dimples
across the band of grasses, deep and earnest,
fields and fields of buttermilk and lye.
Sit by the stream nearby and sing the grass song,
let your kora blossom into an opera of string.

Copyright © 2022 by Michael H. Brownstein Michael H. Brownstein’s volumes of poetry, A Slipknot Into Somewhere Else and How Do We Create Love?, were published by Cholla Needles Press in 2018 & 2019, respectively.