Nuts & Reverie by Jonathan Regier

After wirecannies by sean s, geese and poles by sean s, Circadian rhythm by Jen Dick, and the Moron Poems of George Vance and Jonathan Regier

The squirrels in Australia aren’t even 1% visible
And are still more visible than the squirrels of my
Heartland.

I have a theory—your mentioning the power-lines
Made me remember it. As a child I could never get over
Some basic difficulties. Walking was such
A difficulty. The learning curve was like an egg
Balanced on my head, and when one breaks it one dies
And can barely work until retirement in the stock room
Of a liquor store, or until the slow axe of diabetes or the
Old oak of lung cancer. Consider that the best runners
Wear the crappiest shoes as children. No one needs to say
What’s behind the comfort of modern footwear.

Those fucking squirrels live a true life, and everybody
Knows it. Everybody knows by their speed on the wire.
As a stupid child, learning to run and learning to speak,
And dropped again and again off the precipice of the schoolhouse,
I remember a flock of squirrels that
Ran from the sun to the tree, and from the tree into
The equal sensorium of inner space. Those I call
The squirrels of vision. And they never return unless
I return to a foreign country. But we’ve also got
The squirrels of my memory. And those are bounded
By the huge salt oceans.