Ash Branch Church

Road. Rice & ice cubes

for lunch

the next day

because I was hungover.

The night blushed

before strolling among the tufts

of Spanish moss clotting

the oak boughs. Stone stabs

whose names & dates

precipitation & wind’ve

near-erased. Sky cleaved.

Ecstasy, apostasy. There was no

returning whence,

no finding shelter

in the gushing damning weather.

Socks dampened. Squelching

between worlds, among

the long dead in their worm

garden, it seemed

a cleansing, the warm

parish rain. Such that,

much after, when we returned

to the hotel

the lobby chilled us

as if it were a root

cellar & we were spider

eyes spiking dark.