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.

your words circle the table setting
like seagulls above an ancient pier —

we are tied securely to the table
and you are saying and saying and
with staccato clink of silver and china 
you scatter the pieces of your day —

if only for this and if it weren’t for that
and all of it going straight to hell —

until suddenly then
with sharp scrape of chair on tiles
you are away again to the streets
a weary but briefly unburdened trawler
out into the gathering night and
back to your brooding sea.

Glimmering in the night sky
The ancestors

Who dug the holes in the earth
Who lined up the stones
Who stretched canopies of leaves
And built the fires
And cooked the animals 
And planted the seeds
And gathered the fruits

Who formed the words
And made the love
And fought the battles 

The first of everything 
The last of everything 

The ancestors 
And all they gained
And all they lost 

Glimmering in the night sky