Snip snippets from MicroStorm Watcher

Just another frigging day here in Baton Rouge, where police officers dangle precariously from lopsided street lights and everyone is all about blocking the box on College at 12:25 PM.

"A man and his daughter drowned in that puddle, you're lucky," says the Albertson's check out man, after I describe to him how N. Acadian's micro-valley was 4 feet under earlier Thursday morning."You'd think they'd find a way to make that, I don't know--less of a valley there," he mused aloud.

On a side road off Morning Glory, a couple stood patiently under a fallen oak, almost like they were waiting for the wedding photographer. It will be just as pretty, if not more so, with all the green down around their shoulders.

Thistles

Against the rubber tongues of cows and the hoeing hands of

men

Thistles spike the summer air
And crackle open under a blue-black pressure.















Every one a revengeful burst
Of resurrection, a grasped fistful
Of splintered weapons and Icelandic frost thrust up















From the underground stain of a decayed Viking.
They are like pale hair and the gutturals of dialects.
Every one manages a plume of blood.


















Then they grow grey like men.
Mown down, it is a feud. Their sons appear
Stiff with weapons, fighting back over the same ground.

- Ted Hughes

Dandelion Gigantus