Here’s one that is more than and different from just a story. It feels more like a semi-abstract painting: if made clear like a photograph, it would lose its raison d’être.
Cold reason is an arid field of dust.
You can plough it daily.
The Good Lord knows I do.
More tears don’t trouble desert dirt.
Thats why I plough out here.
I work so long I get bone tired,
get tired of seeing blood on dirty hands.
A blister’s blood dries fast in desert air,
rusts gold and restful when the sun goes down.

Yes, we can can.

In the delta, blues are froggy, soggy wet.
Stay away, Lord. Stay way, way away.
A feral boar hog wanders in regret.
Loose music gets the dire, dry people tight.
They sing a song of ploughing dusty rows
in the desert where mirage is all that grows.
I plough the swamp, let in the drying sun.
I pack a pistol and a combat knife.
I am scared of nothing but my mortal self.

Yes, we can can.

This is the very best of times.
Green gardens ring with tingling chimes
of ice in tall drinks edged with lime.

The women wearing see-through clothes
wander pointedly unposed
in light sunglasses that disclose

a welcoming that seems to say
come hither more than go away.
There’s little stands in Cupid’s way.

The river’s bank invites, as fast
currents transport new-mown grass.
New lovers wonder will love last.

The winter’s sorrows fade away.
The cemetery’s lawns are gay
with small white flowers whose bouquet

preambles pleasures for these hours
when lovers pause between brief showers
to sun, and sample elfin powers

the summer serves. The lawn is warm
and beauty is a thin tanned arm
that, brushing mine, completes the charm.

They buried him with a gunny sack filled with chitlins
on his own farm in his cinderblock mausoleum
that he had painted bright barn red and had pine panelled
inside and where he’d racked his sporting rifles
and stashed his cache of Playboy magazines.

There would have been space to burn and even some left over
but the consensus of his grievous family was
to give that room to his V-8 pickup truck
which meant they did not sacrifice his hounds
and lay them out like hotdogs in crepe buns.

His memory immune
To foreign names
Erases now he lives
Abroad his own.

I visited the place that hatched my dreams.
Although the oaks are older, there’s more sky
than when we leaned against them watching teams
of ants cart insects down the rigid bark
to serve as dinner platters in their nests
down under cedar needles on the lawn.

It’s not my home now; even time has moved.
I say good-bye to silence and retreat
back to my present home where rivers grooved
first settlers’ maps then shrivelled into creeks.
Time’s lines extend the song that’s dreaming me
while the wind skins gravel from untended graves.