you sit on the hood of your car,
an orange duster with black stripes,
faded sunken steel that reeks
of leaking oil, decaying vinyl,
bad shocks, bald tires, rust —

while stardust particles suspend
in blue-black gelatin dark,
and drunk streetlights flicker
as your bottles spin careening 
end over end, to arc high and shatter 
in distant compressed reports —

amid closed shops and empty lanes, 
the sweet summer wind 
of a country town —

and this —

dull erratic muttering of self,
endless mental humming of self,
tossing, turning, gnashing self,
alone in the moonlight and silence.

lilting calliope from musty tents
that folded recursive row upon row, 
lonely stray dogs and a circus train
that reeked of grease and escape —

but what movement and song
that hot fairway night
painted eternal in garish hope,
until the artists and actors 
dissolved in their drinks
and the colors faded at dawn —

it was simple, it was small,
it was nothing, I know, 
but you shone 
in the moonlight 
that night.

there is a place between
gray glass paneled buildings,
of corroding bricks, city slush
debris of wrappers, cups, bags, 
apparel tattered, tossed aside —

a place where darkness contracts
to a fine mute subliminal point
nor moon nor stars can penetrate,
nor the narrow eyes nor thoughts
of police, parents, children, lovers —

lost in silence, lost in dusty
stale breath odor of too small,
too worn out to remember or as
intractable as foundation cracks,
weeds, rust, stains, corrosion,
battled, battered, abandoned
to wild and tangled beauty —

there is a place between.

Gray #1

Willow bends to stream; crane soars to cloud.
What world is this? What time, what day?

In wind, our figures sway a moment bright,
then mottled gray we turn, and still.
This forest night has no memory, cannot retain
wandering prints or wayward hands.

Day, rain, night, wind, wake, sleep:
in light but once and gone forever gray.

Gray #2

We laughed in the sun
with cares thrown to wind
and dust rising in the east.

No one can know this moment,
that memories flood the eyes
and that we cannot express
the dust between us.

In the graying twilight,
a horizon of black specks,
of birds scattered to night,
someone is always coming—
death, the apocalypse, sleep.

I will carry you, if you need,
back to the campsite, or
toward black mountains
rising before us in the west—
if you choose, I will carry you.