-Dream (a little dream)-

Naomi is in the valley. 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, (the muscular geep)
runs northbound in the near distance.

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

yellow on metal-ribbed
fields of cobalt blue. 

Neville thinks they're in too deep

as if the Ohio is to pull them down.

Naomi is seductive in the valley, hooks

the child below
the hollow pits.

Neville hooks

the bend at his knees
and the child

sways as he would in a hammock latched between

the blue Appalachian hillsides nearing the clapboard

house in the lowlands.