Algoma Guardian
She’s bound for Toledo riding
low with grain, slipping through
fine blue capillary that splits
the difference between Belle Isle and Windsor
Canada keeping a low profile
to the south forever
confounding us.
N A I D R A U G A M O G L A
emerge one by one from behind
a clump of trees in the middle
distance, tidy Canadian houses
gobbled like so many pills
hull bleeding rust
I stand witness
to silent progress
her steady down bound passage.
Durable Medical Equipment
Standard kit; four wheels and a hand
brake, tubular construction in sober
parsons black with a lick
of chrome fittings, she’s low
to the ground and tight
on the turns with a basket
up front, padded kneeler in back,
our Mardis Gras float, I’ll ease her in
behind the Krewe of Mona Lisa and Moon Pie
while you slosh hurricane and wave
to the joyous, drunken throngs.
Dave Hardin is a Michigan poet, fiction writer and artist. His poems have appeared in 3 Quarks Daily, The Prague Review, The Drunken Boat, Hermes Poetry Journal, The Dunes Review, Epigraph Magazine, Loose Change, ARDOR, Carolina Quarterly, The Madison Review, the 2014 Bear River Review and others.