If Kansas Were Candy

the enso

"Hillsboro, Autumn, 2009" by Mark Hiebert

the poem

this winter sky would be blue
cotton floss, its fluffy entrails
cascading as precipitation, akin to
truth that is stretched like taffy
until it snaps, a piñata of details
that must be separated like chaff. See
the bending licorice trees, the fields
bubbling into ribbons of dark chocolate
with lemon drops as the harvest yield.
Bundles of wheat are butterscotch rounds
dispensed as sweet pills, shiny and accurate,
dotting the horizon from farms to towns.
We could lap it up, this sugary cacophony,
and ride out into a sunset of caramel,
our fingers brushing the moon, its abalone
nougat never quite within our grasp.
We could ride the Arkansas, bob on its swell,
rowing our way past gummy worms and asps,
to land on a prairie of lollipops.