How do you find yourself in literature?
All blue-eyed, drinking from green bottles.

Do you think I’ve done the sky right?
Or was it cloudier than blue? The canoe

is as thin as I can make it: a dry
stick hollowed to make a flute. Could you

think of something more appropriate?
Here, you make some noise with it.

Oh, famous. A tall building swept into
the Mississippi that month of flooding,

roofs like hats floating. Your flat world
then, so green and swaying, wet with muck,

fish too caught in the current to be spawning.
Should I have something about dresses

in the wind, their white skirts waving?
Once you’re dry in Kansas, don’t think

of thanking me. Don’t come to the bar
to find me years later, when I’m bound