-Dream (a little dream) / once upon a time, a family-

Naomi is standing in the vale;

she reads from a book of poems

by Anna Journey who is not yet born:

"Dark Mouth like a Lullaby's"––

reciting to the child, the child beautified;

t-shirt screened in color:

"Chew Mail Pouch Tobacco" which

seems appropriate here.

Obligatory freight train rattles
westward in the near distance.

Boxcars labeled in precision print:
"Chessie Systems" –– glow cadmium

yellow upon metal-

ribbed fields of cobalt blue. 

Neville thinks they're in too deep

as if the Ohio is to pull them down.

Naomi hooks

the child below
his hollow pits.

Neville, hooks

the bend at his knees
and the child

sways as he would in a hammock latched
between the Appalachian hillsides nearing

the clapboard house in the lowlands.