IN PATIENT SPADEFOOT TORPOR, PERHAPS LISTENING

he waits, for he is a spadefoot. And as surely as men
ride in the beds of pickups holding shovels, sometimes
squinting, so too does the spadefoot. He is surrounded.
An ant crawls across a dog biscuit. A baseball hat is mistaken
briefly for a large mushroom. Nobody seems to ever tire
of this. Then everyone gets tired at once, and night is quiet.

It is now that the spadefoot works his little leg.
In time a hallway is made, and a woman,
and we see the remains of a muffin left out on a plate
by the window, which somehow holds for me all of Evening.

Rain falls on the world, and into the cracks, and into a teacup
someone left on a fencepost. Each drop comes tapping the garden.
A mudslide occurs and the spadefoot is swept away.

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