And the Earth

Smoke haze bleeds into every canyon
of the watershed like a gaseous poison;
mountain ridges lost in gauzy softness
and gray-blue monotony.

Like a line of poetry played out to its bone
of meaning, or meaning itself, a tarnished sky
at day’s end knows nothing of its beauty.
Dry broken sagging dead trees rotting

got nothin' on me. The dog days growling
in the clouds, the leaves trotting in the wind.
Each weed or weed stalk weaving in air
and the earth a mystery underfoot.