Cottonwood June Bug

I can smell sage and California

As if she were calico

I can smell cottonwoods

I see gnarled twisted trunks

The emptiness that fills me

Quenches my thirst.

I hear stillness.

It leaves

A June bug's solitary ringing,

High pitched in my ears

Images of memory

To my pensive quiet mind

Yellow prairie grass

A phantom barn

Wavering across my eyes

On this distant, nostalgic land

I see a young, sun tanned freckled boy

With a frayed straw hat

Standing there in faded coveralls

A frog held upside down by its legs

Looking at me

Standing near the shadows

Of the cottonwood trees

I hear a stillness,

The June bug's solitary ringing

High pitched in my ears

I sit very still by a little pool

Reflecting

The summer shadows of the trees

With the light of blue sky

Of this painting in my eye

And I hear a

Stillness,

The June bug has

Its solitary ringing

High pitched in my ears

I see five black crows

Fly across the horizon of this

Lonely sky

Above the grey white

Bark of the cottonwood trees

Cawing loudly in the stillness

Broken only by the

Stillness,

The June bug has

Its solitary ringing

High pitched in my ears