Some nights
mountains turn wicked,
trick me into a fool.
This trouble goes by
like the cottonwood tree,
shedding its seeds
across a low moon
in the Colorado sky.
I saw it just the other day -
white dust passing
the mountains, cloistered
in smoke from another state.
They acted well-behaved,
patient.
But as the peaks watched me,
a foreigner in their big red world,
they thought:
she would be more free
if she had not grown up in a big city,
without prayer.
Walking through the dunes,
a necklace is lost,
becomes detritus in the sand.
The wind, a pickpocket.
I find a stick in the brush,
take it home, like a dog.
Back at the house, I go to the robin’s grave.
His vermillion chest must be faded now,
beneath that brown dirt, cast with that serious light.
Brown feels like forever. All seasons.
Somewhere in the city a little girl wears pink
in a train station with her father.
She sits on a wooden bench, swinging her feet.
The father leans against an iron pillar by the tracks,
lights a cigarette and inhales deeply.
The train comes, the cigarette is thrown.
His silver chain catches white-blue light
as they pass through the open doors.
Somewhere in the city a grown woman bathes,
her body red from the hot water.
She drinks a cold glass of whiskey
and talks on the phone with a young friend.
The woman’s voice echoes against the white tiles
as she tells the girl about her lovers:
A Swiss watchmaker who brings her flowers,
boring but kind.
A young bass singer in the church choir
who likes to kiss in public. He’s very tall.
She hangs up the phone, drains the bath,
prepares to meet a married man.
Somewhere in the city a cedar waxwing migrates.
Dizzy off of those little red berries,
he meets a glass window and is found
lying beneath it, still.
The drunk waxwing is remembered as
a reveler of the bird world.
And here, in the country,
I sit in front of the robin’s grave,
a faint cross fingered into the earth.
There is a grave we don’t know,
the previous corpses
wild.
For once it is empty, yes
a grave
in some forest, that hole
Sheltered.
Of course
it is night.
True dusk, winter dusk.
Green wood
free, mad.
Other planets,
calm and bare,
unfurl unknown sky.
Like a theater,
we see things.
The same blue
badly made rivers.
you:you
something like love
extreme care
The Earth.
I dream I am a menorah
set on fire every night.
By dawn, I am extinguished
by the Moon Road,
a path of water, illumined
and leading to the horizon.
Silver, like a samovar (for tea, maybe ashes).
Grey, like his tumor.
I hesitate to ask this person
if he is still dying.
My mom says:
It can take time to die.
But I remember his words:
The future is so soon.
