Tragedy From Behind the Trees
we headed northbound,
stuck in heavy traffic,
drunk on silver bullets
somewhere outside the
Menominee Indian Reservation
when a small plane came crashing
down right before our eyes
near the side of the highway
and while the black smoke came
billowing up from behind
the cardboard treeline,
people could have been burning
alive inside that plane for all I knew
but strangely, two women in a car
next to my left stared at me in
revulsion as if I were a leper
with a bell around my neck
and they randomly decided
to call me a creeper.
I didn’t fully understand
what it all meant except that:
we’re all mysterious creatures;
gluttonous with triviality, heedless
to the duckpondfull of tragedies
happening from behind the trees.
