Colin Channer

From a plastic Adirondack on the back deck
of a cabin sealed once but abandoned
to a splinter-shaggy-cinder-silver-gray,
I’d watched day diminish as vision does 
when force on eye nerve bloats (vignetting) 
and I’d come through regimented grass, 
curt-sleeved, legs mosquito-peppered 
as guestmates in the big house 
drowsed on pét-nat and edibles.

Confusion is the foreigner’s advantage. Natives 
tamp the nuance in their sounds. Stranger 
seeking refuge pockets vowels, picks gesture,
learns body, gets caught up on the cobble