how many times?

how many times have I walked over your empty acreage
while you're away at work or asleep
in a comfortable house nearer the city? thank you
for leaving it open for me. thank you for not farming it
or developing it.  thank you for letting the grass grow
and the trees age in peace.  you're absent and generous.
and tonight in the dirt, my feet draw a line—
everything that's beautiful, I like to think is mine.

you were 17 when we met, I think I remember the time
or the place, at least.  I couldn't trust my eyes then
and you laughed.  it ran though all my days
in that school and I liked to call you 'friend.'
I remember your expressions and I keep a file of each one
like an eager secretary who can only shake his head
at his own foolishness.  a bolder man saw you shine
but everything that's beautiful, I like to think is mine.

in Crime and Punishment are two pages I won't read
aloud to anyone because they are my story of redemption
from sin and murder and are not Dostoevsky's
to share with anyone else.  how could he have meant
it otherwise?  I can't be honest with my favorites
or I will give too much of myself away.
I'll claim a radio lyric, a story, a rhyme,
because everything that's beautiful, I like to think is mine.

an old watch on Main under plate-glass display, your hands
at the end of the day on the dirtied windows of my car,
the smell of grease at the airport that means I'm home,
and your voice on my answering machine—all grit my teeth
in possession.  how can I be full without these accidental gifts,
without this rich landscape?  how else can I stake my plot
in this gold rush of identity?  there's peace in what I find,
because everything that's beautiful, I like to think is mine.

when my feet are cut up

when my feet are cut up and red
I have nothing other
than to walk on them.

when my sleep is short and dull
I have only to wake and revive.

but when the cosmos is sore
for expanding and needs a rest
then I'll lay out too.

oh time persists
like beard stubble and rough weeds
in each season.

Wooden printing screens

Wooden printing screens half-fill my apartment.
The place is hot and closed, a courtroom
or a kiva for decisions, but my mind is wholly away
in the plowed, foamy dirt south of Slaughterville.
 
The house was white once, the two aluminum sheds
are still painted and padlocked.  And I park under a tree
facing my own home, twenty-five miles back the black road.
I catch my breath, take a leak, and count my steps to the middle

of land owned by insects, a broken porch, and me.
Four meteors in an hour.  The heavens break in Halloween
like champagne and the air is as cold.  The ground is warm yet
and a patch of straw is my pillow for the show.

The stars are salt, preserving the nightsky
so I am an archeologist, though a pauper, and alone as well.
I am healthy when I become empty here,
collapsing in the hollow ruts.

I want to sleep here tonight, curled in my car
with my suede coat and flashlight
but I make it only to four before the job is done
and I crawl home in peace.