My toxic assets
        have been building up
                for so long
I didn’t even get a chance
        to meet them
                when they came
around the mountain
        by chance
                just to say hello
before I fell down in a field
        smitten with underbrush
                and the drowsy way
I stay disconnected from things
        by touching the thin air
                that follows me
through the radio
        and willows unnamed
                beside a roaring stream
that empties into a gorge
        no one has fallen into
                by this century
because they put up a fence
        made of styrofoam egg crates
                to hold back
the torrential parade of wolves
        quickening to a pulse
                beside the white chickens.