Where the sky is so blue says the song
But is it really bluer in Alabama
Not around the steel mills it isn’t
The pungent yellow haze and the smell
That distract furiously from sun and air
The toil within that shortens miserable lives
The part of town the kids’ football team
Never visits willingly
Partly for the environment there
But mostly because the players
Could whip our asses
There’s a bright golden haze on the meadow
Sings the man atop the horse
But surely it’s the meadow that is golden
And not the haze
No doubt our mood inflects
Our vision of the world
And a songwriter in Connecticut or New York
Fancied the feeling of straddling horse
And waking the cornfield with pretty ditty
Fantasizing but not feeling a mood
And even on those occasions when
A true emotion seizes us
Must we claim fallaciously
That nature responds to our pathetic feelings
This mockingbird that has not perched
Upon the wire for many months
Spreads its little beak and pours forth
Such a mighty torrent of sound
Invitation or warning I know
But I can’t help but note the tones
Mournful brash amorous hurt or mean
And what is joy to a songbird
What sorrow
Its wishes nothing to which I can respond
This corpse of squirrel once so frenetic
Busy excavating or turning wary
And waving its semaphore tail
Gnawed the power line weeks ago
And now a few thin bones and a bit of hair
You can just make out the little skull
Sacred relic and significant sign
Or site for scavenger and saprophyte
And what is it makes the world intelligible
Where does fiction fall and bullshit take up