Prowling

Prowling 

- Up late after Porch Fest 

Some nights my mind’s a cat, up
in the dark, hunting. It smells

poems. The rubbing of a poem
on the doorframe. The rut

of a good idea as it passed.
So now I’m up thinking about Mick, 

tall, with a porkpie hat, who we met today
at the music festival. He gave off

kindness the way an orange does, citrusy 
without trying. Or the two gray dogs, soft in their

doggy thoughts, a different angle on the world.
Or the way a jet trailing white wake

through an unbroken blue sky is also a speedboat 
on a lake, flipped upside down. 

And Autism, I’m thinking of that, too, though 
I’m always thinking about Autism 

these days, and my sweet son dancing against
his shadow at the music festival, the two of them 

working something out, you can tell, and I’m wondering
what’s it like in there? imaging then a maze

made of brilliant colors with the best names 
no one can pronounce, so you just have to shimmy.