Yes, in the distance there is a river, a bridge,
there is a sun smeared to a rosy blur, red as
a drop of blood on a slide. Under this sun,
droves of poetry readers saunter home
almost unaware that they are unemployed.
I’m tired of the dark forest of this book
and the little trail of bread crumbs I have
to leave so readers who say garsh a lot
can get the hang of it and follow along.
And so I begin to erase the forest and
the trees because trees depress me. even
the idea of a tree depresses me. I also
erase the white aster of a street lamp’s
drooping face; I erase a dog named Arf;
I erase four cowboys in bolas and yet in
the diminishing bustle of these streets I
nevertheless keep meeting People-I-Know.
I erase them. Now I am surrounded by 
the faces of strangers which I also erase
until there is only scenery. I hate scenery.
I wind rivers back on their spools, I unplug
the bee from the socket of the honeysuckle
and the four Black Angus that just walked in
like a string quartet. “Get a life,” I tell them.
“Get a life in another world, because this is
a page as bare and smooth as a bowling alley,”
and, then, suddenly—renouncing all matter—
I am gone, and all that’s left is a voice, soaring,
invisible, disembodied, gobbling up the landscape,
a cloud giving a poetry reading
at which, Reader, I have made our paths cross!