your spectacle your metaphor

The one time Moco cops hassled us at one of our three Moco creek ford party spots forty years ago (other two Hyattstown Mill Road at Little Bennett Creek, Ten Mile Creek Road at Ten Mile Creek) was Hoyles Mill Road at Little Seneca Creek, we hiked the Hoyles Mill Trail from the B&O bridge in Boyds to SoccerPlex and back Sunday past, an entire maze of trails from Boyds to Seneca Creek at Black Road Road bridge (and from there to Seneca Greenway north and south and Seneca Ridge Trail north and south) that we haven't explored, the fuck? Sunday's blaze

• Not explored not because mococops hassled us on Hoyles Mill Road at the Little Seneca Creek ford and I never went back
• Not explored because maze developed for and by cross-country bikers long after I regularly drove only to DC United US Cup games at SoccerPlex (this is true: forgive 
• me, I saw a SoccerPlex light stancheon from the trail, I was getting my phone out to take a photo when phone dinged happily! mile and a half north I remembered) what a uniform-wearing chanting fuck I will always be
• All three fords now closed to cars, Hoyles Mill Trail and Hyattstown Mill Road Trail now bridged over creeks for foot traffic
• I've hit a wall, regular programming will return when it returns but for now I'm swirling in Gass' boxes within boxes, how infinity is as big smaller as it is bigger
• Ten Mile Creek Road underwater, Little Seneca Creek dammed, Ten Mile Creek's valley flooded for reservoir, Billy Wayne flooring the dark green Dart to catch the cat, discovered a stile for a Ten Mile Creek Trail, another cross-country bike trail, 6.1 miles to Old Baltimore Road, next hike

cruel, cruel summer

D.A. Powell

either the postagestamp-bright inflorescence of wild mustard

or the drab tassel of prairie smoke, waving its dirty garments

  

either the low breeze through the cracked window

or houseflies and drawn blinds to spare us the calid sun

  

one day commands the next to lie down, to scatter:      we're done

with allegiance, devotion, the malicious idea of what's eternal

  

picture the terrain sunk, return of the inland sea, your spectacle

your metaphor, the scope of this twiggy dominion pulled under

  

crest and crest, wave and cloud, the thunder blast and burst of swells

this is the sum of us:      brief sneezeweed, brief yellow blaze put out

  

so little, your departure, one plunk upon the earth's surface,

one drop to bind the dust, a little mud, a field of mud

  

the swale gradually submerged, gradually forgotten

and that is all that is to be borne of your empirical trope:

  

first, a congregated light, the brilliance of a meadowland in bloom

and then the image must fail, as we must fail, as we

  

graceless creatures that we are, unmake and befoul our beds

don't tell me deluge.      don't tell me heat, too damned much heat