Sometimes I think the land,
the kind of soil,
the trees, the vining shrubs,
the water and what swims in it,
what crawls out of it,
these things fill veins
with a stronger wine
than mere genetics.
Feet of clay, they say.
Not much clay in these
Northern parts,
all sand and gravel
pushed and mangled down by
ancient ice,
time after time
until all memory is gone.
You’d think such persistence
would make smooth,
but all I know is raw
and open,
like yesterdays.
I
They say time is a river
You can never step in twice
In the same place
But I know you can
If you wait long enough
Between steps
If you wait until it’s unrecognizable
Until you step on a dry patch of grass
Crunching underfoot just so
Until you taste the clay the color of dreams
Until you feel the sweat making canyons
In the soil on your forearm
Under the seeping sun
Unfiltered by knowing
I say you can, by being still and listening
To the strangely placid screaming
Of cicadas
Dying away into the night
II
Among the ghosts I saw
In a strange and fitful mirror
A young man, lean and early,
Sunlight stranded in his hair
Skin the color of baked earth
Heart like pierced leather
Eyes berserk with possibility
I saw myself, long ago
Summer dies reluctantly
Last call for crickets
Singing halfheartedly
Certainty comes only of ignorance
In such wilderness as this
Each hand grasps another
Until it all tumbles in unison
Ah, the carnage
In the style of exiles
So self-consciously
We sail on the edge of winter
The night suspended
Hangs like a paper lantern
A whiff of jasmine?
In leaps dawn
Like impetuous whimsey
All dressed in fiery red
Eyes burning with mad ambition
A pox on sleep!
The fawning dead
Drifting endlessly into
Oblivion
Not for us!
Up like buttercups
Like spiky woven thistles
Up toward the solar apogee
Until finally, inevitably,
The long graceless glide
Begins again
In slips dusk
All dusky
exiles child 