NASCAR
Not rolling in liquid fire
or pulled apart by physics.
Not between commercials.
But the way an old dog
half-blind
noses around and around
some quiet
apple-scented
chosen ground.
—from Rattle #32, Winter 2009
__________
Mike White: “I’ll often begin writing a poem on a subject about which I know little or nothing. This is the ‘mucking around’ phase, and sometimes (usually) the poem founders quickly. But at other times, a poem about, say, rodeo clowns, will take a sudden and unexpected turn for the personal, and then I know I have the bull by the horns.”
