Luke Bensing

telephone pole

The black, brown, grey, sometimes mossy green

speckled

spiked

the rusty nails have overcome

the telephone pole is now more metal

than wood

what could have

should have

been

weathered scraps of gararge sale signs and lost puppy signs

stuck in the teeth of the nails

bent from the heads of hammers weilded by enthusiastic entrepreneurs

or through the sighs of tired single mothers

that lived here once

they left their mark

they left there mark

nails always driven in, but never taken back out