Listening

Claws step over ear bones, tap on the tin roof. The cabin creaks like an ark. All day winding along a Kentucky ridge line, to lodge a night in a bow-beamed shack. I fry bacon and bread on a smoke-licked skillet as black as a fossil; then settle down to listen to April starlight sweeping timbers. Dark pelts pace moon trails. Night birds hunt; sloe washed wings flick shadows through briery pines. I sip an amber glass of bourbon eavesdrop, on my sleep-walking soul.