Why does it take so goddamn long — the burned-up years, the
landscape memorized without benefit of wheels, the nearly pretty house,
the nearly nice room, uneventful days, implausible schemes on the heels
of unpreventable nights; the perpetually pissed-off ones who just wanted
to hurt somebody, the incipiently pissed who had to be roused with a
broom, the well-meaners who tried to help, the feckless risks, the nearly
helpful teacher, the failures that can be achieved without trying, the sick
bosses, the wrong beds with the wrong ones, the unheeded infections, all
the ugly run-over shoes, the thousand stupid things you wanted (others
had them); the carcasses of your young dumb dreams strewn all over the
slithering hills…
          If you could just say I feel lost here and I’m going to go home now.
For where on earth would you buy that ticket. Who would meet you when
you got there. By what sign would they know you.
          A man seated below the copia of mounted heads at The Mohawk
said he came from Old Floyd. In the town center of Old Floyd they had a
bell that came from France, and when hunters lost themselves in the
forest the bell would be rung so they could find their way out. It was, the
man said, his dream to lose himself in the forest and be saved by the bell.
Saved by the bell. Get it.
          A circle of blackened rocks, vagrant moon, the trees that say Come
near; the bull that doesn’t care…
          I who once fled north slumped over the pew of a family of promi-
nence and came back with my glasses taped at the stem (as a dog returneth
to his vomit.)
          Longing to touch the unguarded earth, touch it while it is still warm. 
          Recurrent dream of freedom: You are outside. It rains. The water
turns you transparent and sexual — like electricity caught in a jar. Sud-
denly you are wide awake and everything you ever wanted is here. You
will never need gloves again, never be out-of-date. Harm or be harmed,
take or be taken. You can cry and creature here. So quietly can you die.
          Then the images are upside down, inside out. After typing your en-
tire life, you discover your carbons are in backwards. Where there should
be darkness, the light is hard on and vice versa. Except for that long blue
rag of land. And the pelicans on Sugar Lake.
          Up north with its thirty minutes in the sun, good schools for the
moneyed and silent alarms, and south with its petrochemical plants and
joblessness. And the children of children, buckets of children, jumping
through snatches of smoke, penitentiary bound. 
          Barred from both and you miss them terribly.

          Linked to an experience       a feeling deep down
that won’t stop twisting      until the last rivet of grief is secure

          All our days are numbered. Not unlike old lumber for a house
that’s going to be moved and lived in all over again. Same old blunders on
a different hill.