I turned the pages of the street
from 99 & Broadway
to the narrow path down
town

I walked the length of the entire
book
in an hour and a
half

I scrubbed the blood off the doorposts
with a dishrag soaked in
wine

I drove a symbol through an open field

I did donuts in the daffodils

I laughed at the uncertainty

I found the wolf who cried
eternity

Weeping in the pillows

The wolf picked up the field,

Folded it,

And put it in his pocket.

There was disdain upon his face,

As though I was to blame
for the dogma of crushed

Daffodils,
scrawled like Arabic tire
tracks

Over all his former rainbows

"So you're the boy who cried wolf," he said

"You're the one
who thinks it's clever
to set the pages of a lawbook
to music,

To turn the wolves of Eden into
monsters,
so we can never play with sheep
again."

I took a look
around
and

Marveled

At the sparrows of the deep,
swimming
through the rainbows,
the cumulonimbus
sheep

And I became a raincloud;

I wept into
the pages of the
street;

Poems bled into the pavement

Until they mingled with the laws

Melting at my feet

I looked up and saw the clouds

Running down the cheeks
of the sheep sent down
to murder me,

And I pleaded for forgiveness

From the wolf who wept
eternity

©2025 Nathan Payne