My Sweetest Friend

The desert was cold tonight.

A thin, orange moon
tilted on the western horizon,
and to the east, beneath Cassiopeia,
a satellite’s iridium flare
streaked southward.

I remembered
the smell of cocoa butter
and thought of your hair
bleached by a northern sun.

The compass you gave me
points always to Ultima Thule.

And I feel just like Jesus' son

What Became of the Likely Lads

This cloudless night has opened vast arms
and released the stifling day.

An Army convoy crawls a dark road
like a sparkling centipede.

Where do bad folks go when they die,
sings the turret gunner in the scout vehicle.

They don't go to heaven
where the angels fly,
he sings into the headset mic.
They go to a lake of fire and fry.

We'll see 'em again on the fourth of July.

What the Lieutenant Dreamed

Winter arrives in the night desert
with rain and silent sheet lightning.

The Lieutenant keeps
wiping the windshield
but the mud is on the other side.

The convoy rolls along a pocked road,
and someone sees white-bellied frogs
leaping in rain-shimmered headlights.

The Lieutenant keeps
thinking of a song by The Libertines,
What Became of the Likely Lads.

Someone says
I saw this on the Natchez Trace,
the frogs and the falling Live Oaks.

The Lieutenant keeps
three dusty carpets and his heart
rolled in a cardboard box
that he plans on sending home for the holidays.

The Lieutenant keeps wiping the windshield.