the way it seems to
everyone’s saying
haying takes time
from the bow of an earthship gliding
so down the rows a curvy elliptical hanging band of thread stalks
bags rolls square bales heaping up
okay
she needs to be around a lot of animals at one time
her dogs hunting
my cats hiding in cardboard boxes
you taking memories to go
deer and raccoons snacking on leftover bits in the wild places
mother child strangely peeling off in a different sad brokedown Jeep
on a tear on the racecourse of Sunday’s grueling events
the little darling
wears a string of Russian amber
placing red rainboots on the running board
then leaps into the baler cab manure smells wafting
with the raggedy seats fuming
for like hours the haying the hay
closer
ballerina boy
a disarming investigator partial to daring leaps
a paycheck
steady lines of each welfare state
like in Massachusetts
either 15 or 50
you lived a lot
on some of the best stages:
Garnier, Metropolitan, Berliner Schauspielhaus
getting used to a stretch of time
hairpin turns
fashion
youth
let him be him
keeping up the façade
until the assumptions held him accountable
“Afternoon of a Faun”
with Frank O’Hara and Edwin Denby
the lost intimacy cracking
under a mackerel sky
the artistic leisure glimmering through eras
swords of terrifying light
breaking both ears
both feet both eyes both nostrils
a cloud of phlegm
an octopus ranging through a salty wet skull
looking more toward where fingertips
guide the core
engaged
with tears
streaming across the dreaming courage
Motors
zero to sixty in how many seconds
for the Cherokee
almost fifty years ago
stopped by a local Nevada sheriff for ninety in a twenty
not a Jeep
now nibbling red, green, earth tone olives
at the stained bar
cuppa tea
5 in the afternoon
rain will start later
the apothecary provides alchemical potions
for claustrophobia the disease to curb
with back channels
and pinecones
a 1972 neon orange BMW was the car I drove and got stopped in in 1974
1972 Jeeps: the Wagoneer, the Townside, the Jeepster
today a dusty lilac blue 1972 BMW is parked on the one-way street outside The Bookstore
in magnolia season
rain hasn’t started driving north to buy a dowel and some beads
the highway crowded with Jeeps:
that Cherokee, the Wrangler, the Renegade, the Gladiator
the Wagoneer Hot Wheels from the Stop and Shop tucked in my coat pocket