When Johnny Tells Stories

The sky won’t disappear
and that soldier with his casual gun
slung over his shoulder is a cloud.

Trees sliding down the horizon to the river
are philosophies like railway tracks
linking place A to profit B.

We only imagine we know how storm clouds
congregate in armies and slash
through the comfort of armchairs in back yards.

How we listen is by constructing myths—
one page of time after another flipping over
in the wind before we can feel.

We are neither woman nor man—
we are stories laid to rest on the ticking arms
of a sundial—that place where we imagine.