painting by Marlene Vine (marlenevine.com), poem by Roy Herndon Smith
words weasel out of
denotations, their babbling
tones leave us gasping
the weather is mixed
shadows and patches of light
nibble each other
the earth shoulders up
through floods of water and fire
a child skips ahead
her mother follows
looking at her phone, a bird
angles over them
through the trees holding
like the lines of a poem
pieces of the sky
like the stanzas, scenes
of living beings rhyming
the world with their breaths
dust 