Rumination                                                                       

Six or seven kids circle and slice the manicured yard incessantly on red

and silver trikes buzz-bombing each other, occasionally crashing into adults

perimetered like prison guards ensconced in bullet-proof watchtowers,

either too numb, distracted or just brave enough to sit more or less

non-plussed sipping mai-tais and martinis with lips pursed, making talk so small

the manic tykes look tall as they murder this once-perfect lawn. Mosquitos

in squat human bodies flit and bite and irritate, tear at exposed flesh,

circulate in standing water of stagnant disappointments.

 

The brain sometimes is a gang of feral children uncaged, driving unlicensed

vehicles with paltry brakes, a tropical rainstorm of pelting thoughts pounding

the skull’s slick inside like a cord of coconuts, a maniacal film noir marathon

in a tawdry theater with torn seats and a sagging screen, a cauldron of insomniac

brats and frenetic bugs blasted on methamphetamine and jars of clover honey.

Clumsy strangers dressed in recurring anxieties and inert regrets dance in an empty

lot stumbling over crushed beer cans and Chinese food take-out containers.

 

And yet, all that’s really needed for relief from such onslaughts, for some equanimity, is one

blue pause, a pond somewhere in a remembered meadow for this crevassed bundle of cauliflower

tissue, for these wayward youth to float in, and afterwards a languid back-stroke in mid-day

sunshine—cerebellum pacing itself leads the way for hippocampus and neocortex as they feel the water

quiet their ragged voices, calm their anguished axons and disturbed dendrites, later after the swim

all the lobes might gather on a warm shore to loaf and savor the tricyclers’ surprise, a lullaby sung

by a chorus of hell’s little angels,  thank the gods—they’re finally tired—in the rising moonlight.