No Reason but Cabin and Hidden
I drove four state lines from home because my heart
can be singular. At dusk, the outstretched town
switches on its bats. Tiny lamps spill footpaths.
That I intended to be away, to look at myself
as what happens meant I lugged eight boxes of hunger
to woods soaked in mammals, smudged owls.
I drove right into a starched lunatic wind,
which was all honesty. The horizon became a line
to practice, a predicament
to unwind, to build multiple syllables.
Indeed there was effort. I trawled curves of cut cliffs to remember
this year as sustenance
and held to the ordinary last words
of five psalms. The human voice diminished. Only a cloud-
rapt sky and windscript tearing up
every bubble-necked creek. Here, I reassembled
a beginning. I woke to a list no one kept on a wall
and erased. It was possible to be seen
with binoculars and slight lacerations, watching buffalo
as amulet. Around me, the planet’s surface is storm, gummed stars,
a faithful distance. Once I’d been here
three days, I could remember the earth as apology.
Copses were careless with purpose. No need
but opposite direction and the sound it makes.
What Fell
When I open the fridge this morning, still in the slow
engine of sleep, a nearly full bottle
of Malbec cupped in the door suddenly tumbles
and cracks on the tile, throwing sticky
dark fluid and claiming pale
carpet. We crouch to collect jagged vessel-
and force-shattered glass, clutching red
in our treads as we work. All day
I’ll be pulling shards that embedded
the berber. All day, blotting radical
marks with old towels. Outside is nursing
that year-end shudder
of wind. The wind is so harsh at the gate
of the desert. That particular wine
was robust. Spilled, suddenly my house and life
and everything seems opened
to warning. At the window, the sun comes fully on
like an unpocketed plum. My cousin’s son
died yesterday. He jumped
from a bridge when the map of his heart
couldn’t take its direction. Dawn was thick
as iron. Not yet drinking
its distance. The boy left meticulous notes for his family
and thirteen friends. He’d turned in
his term paper, tidied his room.
