I had a line in my head 
as I arrived to work on a Sunday
I thought of it as I passed a grove of tall pines
where I often see crows playing

It was a dull and dragging line
heavy as death 
I thought, that’s a prompt of a line… 
asking me to further describe                 .

The kind of line that needed to be lighter
that needed musicality, to give it a sense of irony
to glorify it at all

The kind of prose that doesn’t sing
or ring around the pines in brilliant blue 
A music that falls backwards with a thud
an ambient hum of mud or blood

A line that I knew would be the last line
The rest of the poem would stretch in the other direction,
like one of the underdog Wile E.’s contraptions–

a slingshot which would fling you face first
into a dry cloud of dust.