Use your eyes like shovels, dig through the smog, the muck

in your head and see the mountains beyond the skyscrapers.

Something is rising like bread within you, but the slightest noise...

Get to high ground, ford the rivers of traffic and if your feet should

get wet, just remove your socks before the ice joins

your skin and you lose all feeling for walking or balance.

There is a type of tree they say cries. There is a frog freezes solid

in winter. There is a bird mimics the sound of cell phones. Even you

can recognize this. Let that bit inside you that grows trail out

of your eyeholes. Dribble it down in front of you, and follow it

to something more than made.

C.L. Bledsoe (VA)  is an assistant editor for the Hollins Critic as well as a founding editor for Ghoti Magazine. Bledsoe's work has appeared in Margie, Nimrod, Story South, and elsewhere.