Outing Poem by rich soos

<i>for Erin</i>

climbing the ragged thorny hill
behind our mobile home park
we look down on tin houses
and 30 year old palm trees
so puny from here
the thorns remind me that
we are far from Eden
and as high as we travel
we can never reach God
on this particular path
beneath our aging sneakers the earth
actually crunches in the heat
the pond is almost gone in this drought
where do the frogs go, you ask?
I can't answer that
another child once asked me
where butterflies go when it rains?
I can now say - with the frogs
there is something sacred here
perhaps our quietness


from Garden Songs (1995)