passing

hunkering under a larch
-more a lurch-
but shaded from rain anyway and its signature wet
plummet from ambiguous clouds to committed earth,

we trade smokes
crouched in ditches more sane
than war trenches,
defenseless, in fact,
from falling potato-sized drops
hurtling from the farm fields of heaven.

we are past sarcasms and wit,
so sodden the sudden breaks of blue -
soft and roiling crescents of sky -
are like music, or a promise from summer:
we lean on these.

we prefer polka to
international waltzes,
but in this cold relentless spring
time passes like bricks laid on walls that run across the horizon like
Great Walls of sunset.
we cannot dance yet,
feet screwed to muddirtearth
becoming one with the churnedsplatmurk
night coming
and the cold advances

we thank the stars we cannot see
that we are only hunkered here
sacrificing comforts
to see moonrise, and not
to shoot an unknown enemy