Out In the Desert, We'll Have No Worries

Every night
she dropped her dreams across an uncut lawn,
dark feathers I gathered in my sleep. I knew her lips
would kick-start my heart,
such massive drains on unknown power grids.
She said there was a factory that
manufactured what I needed most.
She said we're going downtown.
And all the headstones climbed Cemetery Hill
just to watch her dance.

This morning, Mississippi huffed and steamed
and sweated like a fat woman who sang thin, sweet songs.
If I heard her on the radio,
I'd swear to God she was a Swainson's Hawk
wobbling in on a river of wind.

I'd wait ten minutes
before calling my daughters
outside on the limp lawn,
saying, Girls, look at that, will you.
I'd say, Here she comes, this young
thought, driving against all that wind
and a mouth full of surprises.
I'd say, There must be diamonds in her heart
and ice on her wings.

Where is Kate Smith when you need her,
is what I'd tell them.
Where's Philip K. Dick, for that matter?

Ever since I came home from Iraq,
I can't find my memory.
I know it's there, biting its cud
and chewing its tongue. I can hear the old cow,
pulling the grass of my future
up in fresh, green fists,
ripping tender blades from a field
I dreamed
every night for eleven months.

But this song is for the sleek rat
who got fat on the flax seed
I left for the songbirds
that never came.
This song's for the river birch
and the white-nosed fox squirrel
and the fallen box elder.

I knew a girl, Holly Anne, who taught me to sing.
She taught me to dance. I worked for her old man,
hauling hay in summer and milking cows.
When I walked through the barn,
she wanted to run, she told me. When I came,
she sent all her shadows to tempt me, dark
feathers lighting all around my sleep.
She twisted, double-fisted all the foot-
bruising gravel of my dirt road youth.

Now, I am a mole. I'm a mole,
sticking his head above the surface of the earth,
and I'm only waiting for the fever to break.



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