Considering narcotics or a cliff
to jump from to escape life’s spasms,
its stench, its futile clinging to reflexes,
and also since we dig ourselves
into the ground while still warm––
the question of how to make it
from one margin to the other,
to traverse the canvas via lines
of color, in rows of beans and corn,
leaving spaces, at the end, for air.
(Beloit Poetry Journal, Vol 58, No 2, Winter 2007)