Tell me how in the world

did an old rowboat come to rest,

here, in a cluster of trees on a farm

in south-central Missouri,

surrounded by a small herd of

otherwise indifferent cows,

beneath an 18th century landscape

painting of a sky full of massive clouds

that look like they could crush and smother

the whole scene if they ever reached their

collective point of maximum avalanche density.

And not a river or pond in sight.

Jason Ryberg is the author of fourteen books of poetry, six screenplays, a few short stories, a box full of folders, notebooks and scraps of paper that could one day be (loosely) construed as a novel.