Never Shoot an Armadillo

I was working on a talk
About time, getting nowhere.
Time is a human madness.
The season then was summer,
Melancholic, nostalgic.
Trying to philosophize,
I was also counting days,

Counting the waves on the lake,
Counting summers at the lake,
Counting bank account burn rate,
Counting in and out of sleep,
Counting lake crossings, paddled,
Swam, motored, sailed, and pondered.
Counting the strokes, the feet deep.

There's only one anything.
When you break it, other things
Are their own things. Nothing breaks
Down. The angle of sunlight,
The shifting breezes, whitecaps,
Portly swimmers, bathing caps,
Ants milking aphids, chasing

Away hungry ladybugs,
Wasps chewing pulp to paper
Nests in the gathering shade,
It was summer, Canada.
The lake was immaculate,
And I thought about Texas,
Where folks have shot themselves by
Armadillo ricochets.