It ends right where it begins—

drunks fall to sleep like winter seals

while cormorants drag the sea

The morning of your death

I walk to the pond’s edge where

toads hold their yearly orgy

One toad

holds the other under water

an omen perhaps?

On the highway home, toads

sing for one another

in the pond below, migrate

toward concrete barriers

that will not let them cross

We’re just like them, Joe

We stay our narrow course divided

from one another lucky if we don’t get run over

on our way to something sweet

The end of America begins here right

where we began & it doesn’t really matter

if that ship is coming in or leaving

We carry every trauma

every blessed seed