Love Poem Misplaced In Another Poem,
By Accident, Of Course

Bullwinkle pulls a hat
out of a rabbit---
now that’s magic!

It looks like Lincoln’s stovetop hat,
a bullet lodged
at the lodge,

a rail-splitting pain
grips Neruda
as he writes

twenty love poems
for the cicada girl,
a shell of herself,

a sand dollar spent
at the sandbank---
waiting for her

to blossom again,
into my arms,
her legs wrapped around me

like corn leaves
around tamales.
Bullwinkle looks

straight into the TV camera,
“ Kids, don’t try this at home,
unless your parents are gone!”

Why he addresses adults that way,
I don’t know?
He’s a moose, get over it!