Gallon

A plastic gallon
fills with rain-soaked leaves
beneath lamplit
unnoticed connifers.

Call it water.

Phillips 66

arcing (Lord
at last) and
calling,
drifting
through the flint mist
of freshwater shoulders.

These towns
are husk

And lean
like children
on the arm.

The pines have parted,
their shadows
unshouldered by
the snow,
and trunks have bent
beneath old halogen.

They groan in
uncontested wind

And make up an old train.

A belly full of ghosts.

A way home winding

through tree-slung deer-hides
and forests of Halloweens.

The old gospel
of a wide, yellow
watching moon
holds itself
to riverbanks,
and waits.