Milkweed

A fugitive still pinned by his name tag

To the workshop in the Holiday Inn,

He stands during his brief respite 

In a patch of weeds overlooking a drainage ditch. 

He holds a pod in his hand.

Not green --

Weeks past green --

Already beginning to split a birth canal

Down its side,

But still not quite ready.

He cannot wait so he preforms a cesarean

And discovers parachutes still sticky --

Not viable in the faint breezes.

He drops them on the ground 

Among the McDonnell's wrappers.

He remembers walking barefoot over cracking dirt 
        littered with cinders and steel-gray stones
        in a field where dry grass scrapes his bare 
        legs into itching while the sun warms his
        shoulders and splits the brown pods bulging 
        with epiphanies that are no longer sticky but
        light and clamoring for the wind and with fingers
        stained with grasshopper tobacco he is their
        skilled and willing midwife releasing them to
        the brightness.

Are there still fields in which lizards, 

Quick as thought, 

Sun themselves on rocks, 

And in which old boards, 

Waiting to be turned, 

Promise salamanders?