"Things, how and when"

Hello, old tree – my truest friend 

of this best hour of the day;

hello, old tree – you might recall me,

and might-not is also okay.

A washboard road can’t get you if you weave;

but the police couldn't care less, emphatically —

the machine of problems and solutions

aches for the nearest soft things.

A bit windward of the label “44”

there’s a smiling man’s face down in the road, low,

greeting folks he can’t much hope to see

–they don’t stop, none do, and why would who?

Things are forgotten, lost, and sworn about;

choking to death on applesauce froth —

the scariest things aren’t at all to other things,

but are anyways still scary enough.

Everyone in the world stomps hard at once

and the world breaks apart in-place —

the test scores don’t matter any more and

everything’s just worth as long as it takes.