after the music of Daniel Johnston
The horizon blazed for three days,
then another three days,
ash snowing the ground, summer
never loosening its grip on our small town.
Our memories of snow, cats, bears, cattle,
rabbits, dogs: all lost
to the birds as we
adopted the gaits and skins
of our familiars.
Mom always believed Grandma would live
with us for just a few days more, until
her country home was safe from the grass fires.
Mom brooded, distant like the mother wolf she’d always been,
Dad gone the way of giant camels
hitchhiking on the memory of the dodo,
while Grandma made a second home of our home,
along with her lifetime of hoarded jars,
canned tomatoes, nuts, photo albums —
never sure when a season would pass,
never knowing when the fires would cease
and her chipmunk could return to the singed prairies
she called a homestead.
My brother and his sea anemone slept
in the aquifer and geologic records, while me and my rooster perched
on the roof each night, noting
and hoping for a change of wind, an end
to a snow that never melted.
We believed everything would burn
for the shortest possible time. A sparrow
perched on the gathered
ash of our windowsill
was all we could ask for.
The horizon blazed for three days,
then another three days,
ash snowing the ground, summer
never loosening its grip on our small town.
Our memories of snow, cats, bears, cattle,
rabbits, dogs: all lost
to the birds as we
adopted the gaits and skins
of our familiars.
Mom always believed Grandma would live
with us for just a few days more, until
her country home was safe from the grass fires.
Mom brooded, distant like the mother wolf she’d always been,
Dad gone the way of giant camels
hitchhiking on the memory of the dodo,
while Grandma made a second home of our home,
along with her lifetime of hoarded jars,
canned tomatoes, nuts, photo albums —
never sure when a season would pass,
never knowing when the fires would cease
and her chipmunk could return to the singed prairies
she called a homestead.
My brother and his sea anemone slept
in the aquifer and geologic records, while me and my rooster perched
on the roof each night, noting
and hoping for a change of wind, an end
to a snow that never melted.
We believed everything would burn
for the shortest possible time. A sparrow
perched on the gathered
ash of our windowsill
was all we could ask for.
Lane Chasek's work has appeared in journals such as Broke Bohemian, The Daily Drunk, North Dakota Quarterly, Plainsongs, Taco Bell Quarterly, and many more. Chasek's first book, Hugo Ball and the Fate of the Universe, is currently available from Jokes Review Press.