Ars Poetica for West Tennessee

A poem is a trap I lay for myself,
a hunting ground I should know by heart.

                                    But a rabbit with a knife

is still a rabbit, a snare of irises weeping
just as strong-jawed.

                        Maybe I have always been a visitor.

            A missing child is only a tragedy
            when they know what name to call.

                                    A girl gone nameless

            is just a promise, an empty invitation,
            a bed of a stranger,

a mouthful of light spilling over.

            I used to go out to the pasture at night
            and shine a flashlight into the smothering sky

                        once someone told me it’d never stop

in a million years, no matter how unsure
the message, how alien the world.