for Dave Smith
We taunted the ram in his paddock; he butted us back
to the bleached tinder of last year’s rye
where we flicked matches, whacked chains of charred
patches with team jackets while April egged
the smolders we couldn’t see, stretched flames
as mothers might a sheet across the abdicated
mattresses, from one pasture’s bevy of coddled
birches to another’s rhododendrons, yews
entwined in stunted hamlets. Empty expletives
of smoke were already being scoured from clouds
above the rows of failed rebellion, so
we ran to the future, regret an ember to resuscitate
along the turnpikes, embarked for the adversaries, pushing
computer mice, vacuums, and suffering daily
the subway gate’s punctual insult, cold
metal irreversible against our groins.