This scaled down backhoe, kept yellow
By Simon Perchik

This scaled down backhoe, kept yellow
the way butterflies suddenly lose interest
though its hard-hat operator

likes the risk, touches down
and between the cemetery rows takes hold
as if once here was farmland

with no sunlight left, just these sites
half under construction, half
your jittery eyelids—you watch

how a crop is harvested stone by stone
and by instinct you sift—not here
not there, then try again inches away

shake your invisible wings in the open
alone, alone, rootless and for a split second
another night begins and ends.