There’s the country somewhere outside the car.
The country where the elm fucks the maple
and the elm broods as if auditioning
for a new PBS miniseries.

Taste of tangerine.
Blue as Tuesday.
Wings, the texture of powdered sugar

Novelists are serious about taxonomy–
the blur of color and text on labels
of blue butterfly genera.

Each of us, in turn, has to answer, in one word,
the question: What are you feeling?

In December no less, when it gets dark at four
and this classroom’s been double-booked.

Another band of politicized marginals
prowls restless in the corridor