Nervous breakdown. Left the hoe-down.
Left the hay bales, kale and Brussel 
Sprouts. Left the apples’

Frozen spoils, corvids coring them
With smart, sharp beaks, scattering
	Apple-pulp to the brook-trout.

Drove through the scarped Greens,
Body deep in the stuff of home, dry
As bone, as granite. Drove away.

Spun roulette wheels beneath a chassis,
Swerved with city-smarts, on the verge
	Of migraine, pain of

What’s shed, what’s housed, what’s had.
Arrived with the verve of someone
	Auditioning Broadway

For a bit part in anonymity,
And dowsing for the downside of fortune
	Found a walk along the Hudson  

Bracing. Found the stiff admixture            
Of freshwater undercut by brackishness,
	Brash Atlantic overwriting

Every tributary with a local name,
Erasing any trace of home, replacing 
It with one vast abrasive.