Dreck

Court

Why this way? How can I say what I would say if I could? Why the thick glass
wall blocking all sounds? Why just visions dripping thin droplets? Why the
freezing over? Why dismembering? Why cracking floor boards creaking?
Why do I know your pacing around? It vibrates my well. I expel you.
Banishment. Banshee. Bandit. I love you so very much. I will never step foot
in that place again. I will never step foot in that place again. I am tearing it
down, come back and see a scrap pile, fire starters, junkyard.
Playing with wood, making mantles like altars, blessed splinters. Your hooded
eyes, I put them away. Go look that way. This, my window. That, yours.



In southern Illinois the fields flow,
they're full up of that invisible Thing.
Driving between them at dusk I know love to be
full of silence,
a wind whisper, when you realize what this is, follow the corn tassels
south-west.

But come Arkansas, the swamp chestnut oak is so heavy with its own leaves
that it droops and sinks down the hill
and after that, flatness resumes.
I know it to be over.

And so as I sit here in Texas,
freshly wind-whipped from the plains,
I think of your birthday

and your clever solitude.