This is the word of H. as transcribed this afternoon

There is peace, and there is war—
the near and far colliding,
the pleroma of stars and planets
opposed to our very undertakings.
The sun god Huizilopochtli
whispered that to me in the blue twilight:
he is sorry for the crude tears, the blank
crystals—he’ll wipe our faces
if we want. There’s always
time on this earth, he says,
in between the solid smoke
he breathes. This jefe from out west
the war god, too, has told me
there is no peace, there is only war
and the shattered shades of love
we live though in dreams. Look
he says, there is the black lake.
go to it. Watch its power in winter.
Watch the arms of oak and maple
shade the sky before sundown.
There is peace at the end of the sun.
There is peace in the green flash
between frantic moments of daylight.

For the Drummer of The Jades

I remember how, outsmarted you took
one last class with Master Bartlett—he tore
into your words by not talking of them
at all, in class. Later, walking through
Lennon Park I told you how I’d cracked open
sheet after sheet, sky after sky, all
while looking for a good poem. I’d met
three of four women and they meant nothing
to me, their perfumes, the way each wore her hair.
You, you were listening to the Monkees,
trying to get the hometown ballad right—
but nothing came out sounding like when
a man’s put to heartache or promise
in the high desert when he’s watching a fire
from a faraway ridge and can do nothing about it.

For the wicked had come at night
with the late summer stars blazing
like older women in love. For me, right now,
there is no sound in Ohio that sounds
like the echoes of old mountains
at 9000 feet singing in the sun. Dusted,
I ran the high path only once when we climbed
from the desert into the pines.
So I called to the sky to meet me
In the infatuated South. There was
A run of cold water coursing
From the top of a hill—you know
My soul I left for her to find
forever in the turquoise sage,
and in doing so left my name
for her on this very page.

The Regime's Horrible Plans


Take the world, for example.
If I press your palm into the map
you’ll see a whole new continent--
imagined maybe, but true.

This much I know: the police attack
wasn’t a random event. Went they out
from the barracks, charged.
The sound of their radios in the plaza
was like the first fist thrust
out of a cage, at all of us.

I continue to covet faith. The last martyr
to me is like a dream attained at dawn—
and at last you’ll be free we’ll be free
except for the crack of static in the air.

Catalogue

Citalopram freezes me
in a netherworld
neat and quiet. Sometimes
I find myself sitting at the edge
of my bed, and there’s nothing to say.
On the other hand, buspirone’s
action is unknown. It mellows me,
I mean structurally. The sound
of the grass growing in spring
sunlight, beyond the animal
ledge is what I hear. And when
I’m worried I take lorazepam,
which allows me
to perform without fear. The dark
woods, dense and all consuming,
linger but do not
trouble me. Then, there’s the stuff
for my heart, to slow
the deep volcanic pressures
running though my Chicano veins—
everything has to thin out
if I want to live. In the desert
air of Santa Fe, of sanatoriums
I dream. And when I wake
I drink strong black coffee—there’s
no sugar anywhere in my kitchen,
there’s no sugar in my blood—
that’s the fifth pill working
through the night,
which is filled with lucidity
and light. My lover’s
thighs still beckon even
as the last dear pill
passes and I give in,
I lose myself to the wind
of sheets, the script she’s drawn
from her dresser drawer—
this place is old, and what we’ve
found we taken in for good.

From the Silent Hallway

Something purer was calling—
the friendly sweet flavor of the smoke
could only last so long before it all
turned to ash. Before the past
caught up with the present
and you found yourself loathing
someone else in a dream of curled
bed sheets or worse—there she was
again, pushing back the thick curtains,
revealing daylight. Outside, what you knew

of the city had been replaced by the blooming
suburbs: all the oleanders, all the wandering
marys spoken for or simply replaced—
I can’t help it that they put in the yew
bushes and silver maples before you arrived.
My house is still yours, bleak Midwestern
ghosts included. What choice do I have
but to accept Northern winds and sunless
days? Why, we’ve been hoping
for rain, the kind of rain that lends itself
to rumors and fortitude: what did you do
with that other person, in your dark
little brick house by the river?

All I can say is that by the time
you get this message, the chemicals
will have begun to flow into
another patient, somewhere in a southern
city where the tulip trees have already bloomed—
O, to be there, gray wanderer, in the bright
corridors waiting with the rest, looking out
from the big picture windows
to the rolling hills of central Tennessee unfolding,
the river only miles away.

The Cold Wind Blowing in Dark Woods

I’ve led a furious life, changing
wives in the midst of kindness,
in the midst of heat. The Phoenix
desert did me no good—the deep
canals seeped into my imagination,
I wanted to travel downriver, beyond
The dried rocks that used to hold white
rapids. When I try to explain this confused
past to friends who haven’t seen me
in years, I remind them first
of the desert acres where I grew
large as a fist punching the dry air—

One day I was with a woman
at the park—there was a fake
lake filled with duck feathers
and dirty water. For the night,
she would betray me
before coming back
to save my life. Or was it
the other way around? For she was
as a still night in the deep
reaches of Sharp Mountain,
when all the black birch boughs
speak another language—

and I understand the words
She spoke the first time
We talked standing next to a Blue Palo
Verde tree, the 737’s thundering
overhead, floating fast to earth.
I stayed with her so that I could
look through the 50 year old
windows of my dutch-farmhouse
home, now, waiting for my children
to return from school—
the weather has turned again
and my thoughts wander to the last
days of winter, the morning glory seeds I’ve
saved to spread in the backyard,
along the fence where my property ends.

H. Addresses the Fold at Mid-evening

There was a blue light in my dream
last night—under a sliver of moon
I was fancy dancing with a girl
I knew in college, her ponytails
flying in the dry air—I awoke
to the world I’d made the day I decided
to leave her forever. I cut loose
the last threads connecting me
to Ysobel—I looked in her blue
eyes and wept one more time.

Brothers, I took my black dogs,
I went away with another
woman to the dark birch
woods—she later gave
birth to our children,
and we lived in a valley
where mud was as thick
as summer was green,
beyond our means, always
In love. And I am now

writing you for no
reason at all—there’s a cold
drizzle outside even though
It’s spring and the blue grackles
sing each morning, the young
ones, new flyers, wing and flash
before they land in the grass.
For the meanest of seasons
I’ve found no secrets at all
In this Midwestern scene,

So I call you out, unadvised,
to weep with me for our sister
who must wait eight months
to know if she’ll live to see us old.
While the drizzle surrounds us
we wait for midsummer to shine,
O you of the darker connections
who are still waiting for any night
in your endless desert light.

The Mexican Astronauts: Huitzilopochtli in “Neskyeuna”

Flew over the Mississippi, one
on his way to Illium, the other
on his way to see Machu Pichu.

I knew a naked woman—on the couch
and in the town we'd find the darkest
parks to search each other for love. I'll never
forget those difficult days yearning
as she and I walked through the Sonoran
desert at twilight. I would walk
barefoot and nothing would harm me—
I was in love and couldn’t be bothered.
When the mesquite trees turned in the wind
she said it was my voice moving though her hair.
In all that is and was
the spiked sun was nothing, our sidewalk
voyages were over by midnight. We lived in homes
where no one loved us. No wonder
we married next spring, on Walpurgisnacht,
in what used to be the deepest oak
woods lining the confluence of the Mohawk and Hudson—
the Magistrate was there, in black,
with her leather book and velvet robe.
In the apple orchard afterward we drank
keg beer and white wine from paper cups,
walked into the fields to see bright petals breaking
in fistfuls from tree to tree, there
where years ago shakers had cut down
the forest to make room for planted
rows of quince and McIntosh.

The Mexican Astronauts: Huitzilopochtli in Memphis, Unbound

Once I flew to Memphis
to sleep with a swan—
the summer clicked to a halt
and I was as green as golden
water is at sunset.

At first, on the hotel
bed we sat crossed legged
while behind us on the desk
a dell computer spun old
tunes: we were old enough

to know we'd held each other
one night long ago
in the Sandia Mountains--
everything was different then.

The air was thin as ice
on a skinny pond, midnight
air, late spring. But this time
there were no stars to discover.

Only the hot summer sun
blasting from behind the thick
curtains that tried to keep out daylight—
it wasn’t my fault—I loved her,
I loved her that afternoon,
touching her face, touching
the small space she made for me

in a hotel room strewn
with thick white pillows, magazines
abandoned luggage. I loved her
as the sun went out
over the whole Southeast--

we heard the night birds
even above the roar of the planes
ascending from the Memphis airport,
we made plans as we traced
each other’s palms, finding

the small lines that led to one
another’s bed, a soft white
dream, a scene too often explored—
here in our heads and under the sky,
so often remembered, and never denied.

One Time Crossing the Desert, Hot Blooded Huitzilopochli Dreamed

I decided to live in the modest
fog I created with my body,
not the hot lights you made
with words. I can never
understand the fragments,
the pain and drugs
lost to the earth
that one day in late August
when I refused to talk to you,
or anyone. If I could
get the solution
to this solitude on the hill,
this gray space
I've built up here to compete
with your tomes, I'd open
a trap-door tone to my work
leading me to a secret
basement, another room
where I hesitate to sit.

I told you my friend
I've gone over to the dark--
the photo record will show
my brightness like
the moon's, but I am
easily obscured. Still, the devil
came in the dark, her
bright body a lie
I accepted in the half
light. I knew
what went on
in every midnight
kitchen where the witches
made the last martinis
and prepared for bed.
I had to let that all
go. It was crazy
but I stopped dreaming
of you and everybody else.
Instead, there are vast
woods unexplored, chasms
and meadows of the heart--
I have taken
supper under great boughs.

When we both
longed for the weather
to change, for a second
home to appear in the Adirondacks,
I made a note of your fancies
hoping you would list
mine in order, like some
kind of chant, like some kind
of ulterior motive, leading
to a small home in the high desert
away from the crowds,
the stacked river rocks and blue
wrought-iron gates
glad to have us
the barmaids across
the highway making
quick notes glad to have us.

For the missing and dead H. replies to Xicotenga

About the heaven you invented: the day
I slugged one of the Catorie brothers
with a river rock because I didn't want to lose
a fight comes to mind. We were behind
the John Roberts Dam, ambushed
by people we thought were friends--
they, being from the white trash
part of town, living in the cheapest
tract homes bordering the cruel desert.

After that fight you and I would walk uphill
and down along the dry arroyos
unable to talk. It was simple and I wished
it would all go away--the kids who talked
about Led Zeppelin, the working class hatred
growing in me like a deep blue plum.
So about the cave I invented: in the summer
I'd try to see as many ways as I could

out of the desert. Even walked to the one
girl's house who didn't understand me--
the best she could do was ride with me
out to a prearranged place in the desert
where she'd placed a real bayonet
in the rocky arroyo for me to find--
all we did was drive around and then
I took the knife back home: it was
war booty, taken from a dead nazi

in 1943, stolen by the secret heroine
of this poem from her grandfather's
home in Kansas. I'll never know
why she wanted me to have it,
but after that I left for the dark
I'd begun to grow in my head,
a dark like the wide swath
of white pine and Douglas Fir
on the mountainside, underneath

the sun. I had, long ago, knowing you
O time machine mechanic,
sold that old dagger, that symbol
no one could abide. Its money
bought a real dime bag we smoked
up behind the same dam, right before
tenth grade homecoming. For the first
time I said to you in my ghost voice,
for the first time I said to you
this is our world, the land, the sky.

H. writes to his muses to understand the death of the Novelist D.F.W.

"I am ambivalent about the gringo's attempt to convert me to his god."
--Guadalupe Carrillo Trujillo

Those of us who survive dream of the forest,
thick stands of Western white pine, sometimes
the deciduous woods of Pennsylvania,
black cherry and white birch. One time I even went
apple picking, only to drop into sleep to dream
an even deeper dream, a scene containing all the bright eyed
muses I've known, those visions I've counted on:
there's nothing I like better than falling
asleep under the constant hum of late summer crickets
with my lover, holding her tender body against the light.
Who told you that non-existence is holiness? I can
almost hear the final fury of fall, the balding
grass, the resigned and dying spiders rebuilding
their webs after the unrelenting wind,
the unused day-lillies swaying later in the day.
And sometimes it is her body I imagine
under apple boughs. I am suddenly and irreversibly
drawn to her song, I am pulled to her heart
and it is upon her heaving breastbone I make my mark,
my tongue wild with harkening desire.

De Las Montañas Sandias
for Rachel Hadas

Let me tell you about getting lost
on the Embudo Canyon Trail—
the first time I walked up into the Sandia
mountains at sunrise I had taken
two handfuls of brown insubstantial
dust from the road behind me
to rub between my hands. All I had
was a couple cans of cola, a compass,
a lighter and a pack of Chesterfields.
I had climbed all the way to the first
plateau, 7000 feet looking over
the Elena Gallegos Land Grant,
so that I could pray to my god
for deliverance, for some way out of love
that would leave me alone in the piñon
hills for a while. That afternoon I crept
along each switchback until the desert
turned to Ponderosa forest. I thought of
a diamondback rattlesnake waiting
where the woods turned—what little
water there was, singing in the granite stream,
as I killed my death with a heavy stone
I plucked from the trail, then etched
my name in a dry rocky
meadow with a black branch.
There I was, heaving.

One time I walked
until the trail ended. From where I was standing
I could just see the sheer rock face where two climbers
were testing lines, a thousand feet above me.
It was Albuquerque—dry, still air,
small campgrounds in the Sandia foothills
made from native granite, rock shelters
where we could drink and cook
all night, talking of the stars, speaking
in whispers when the small animals around us
arose to live their lives under the brilliant moon.
Last night I dreamt I read your poem
under the insufficient starlight of southwestern Ohio.
Where I am now Dunbar’s ghost lingers
in the soft afternoon—there is a tenderness
out here, to the rolling hills and thick stands
of white oak that could not exist
in the hot desert places I once called home.
Is it me or my heart that cannot stand
the way you’ve sketched-out my sad, dirty
town as a place for your pale rebirth?
I might as well be in Columbus, waiting
for the bus to take me home. I have been spared
the full-blown horror of schizophrenia,
the voices and disconnections hanging
like loose threads in my old Navajo blanket—
when I left Albuquerque I kept a locket of hair,
a gift my first lover cut for me ages ago.
One night I burned it under an oak tree—
I’d started the fire with a pile of dry white
clover flowers I picked in my yard.
So goes the procession of the Lord into the night sky.
It was the city as seen from the woods, the city
inverted like a bright mirror in the night.
You see, when I was young I’d climb
all day just to seek the cracked mountain’s
secrets, the dry passages, the thick scrub oak
that told me I was near the top of the range,
able to see the volcanic peak guarding
one edge of the Navajo Nation. The air was thin,
I could feel my heart for the first time pushing against my chest.

Carta de Huitzilopochtli a J. S. B., con Humildad

Every day you have to know I’m up here
On the banks of the Greater Miami fighting
The gringos: I am one of those men
You called forth in one of your poems. And because
I live so close to them, I can taste their greed when I eat,
When I break bread at daylight, sitting
In a clapboard dutch-roofed farmhouse
That overlooks the oak-lined street.

Listen: this morning I drove my son
To school. I thought of the war, I looked
In vain for any other dark haired heads
Like mine stumbling through this wicked
Part of Ohio I never imagined in my little
Desert home. My son’s eyes tell me I am there
And otherwise a part of a greater nomadic urge—
To leave the Chihuahuan wastelands forever in search of water.

Uneasy Travelers on the Ghost Trail, 2008

For Mark Lee

When I returned it didn’t matter. Twenty years
in the hardwood forests watching thick
green rivers weave their way in places
I’d forgotten—it was at Lake Nokomis
I saw the comet bear down from the northwest
sky and should have known it’d take a long time
to sort out the future. Now I am here

thinking of a desert home, whether or not
I could stand the small black widows
or even the sunlight—I’ve gotten used to
the thick oak and maple filling most
of the forgotten southwestern sky—
most importantly, there is something here
to keep me from dying. The first lilac buds and viney
morning glories scatter patches of color that conquer the winter.

So where are you today, dear traveler? I cannot
envy one man’s death in Tucson
Arizona, cannot figure if you swerved
to avoid the sun or simply because you erred
in reading a map too closely, to confidently.
I am here on the other side of the country
beginning a ghost song for you—lately,
unsure of the afterlife and whether or not
to be brave, I have sacrificed my only peace
today to pray for your deliverance.

Where we are tonight depends on my life now—
on a clear straight road in central Illinois
one summer I stopped to watch the grasshoppers
flick across thick grass plains. I was on my way
to New Mexico, and had stopped because I could
drive no more with out becoming drowsy.
From far away you meant to call me
on my meanness, what I said one lost day
years before your hero died.

The three resuscitations of Rudolfo N. Carrillo

At first he rolled his eyes—I thought
he was looking askance at paintings
of Manolete on the wall. Then he toppled
sideways onto the floor—we were somewhere in New Mexico,
judging from the light through the windows,
judging from the stone-dry air of the house. I was there
to help his soul out. The morning I arrived,
my father was sleeping on the couch—he looked
like a child. There was nothing wild in his shape
but I could tell he was dreaming—this is the body
that carries the seed, this is the hand that harvests
the hard yellow maize and grinds it to paste.
But I was dreaming too. So in my dream my father
seemed alone in his own mischief. Against
the stucco walls of his own home he wandered
like an empty ship. This was the second
resuscitation. When I breathed deeply
into his very soul I lit a furnace briefly, a pale
glow that didn’t last. Remembering how
it was done, I began to sing—
for the third time my father awoke,
stirred by the electricity of hope he found
in my face. He told me so before he left
the room, before he slept and I left
him to his quiet doom.

9 Elegies for Jon Anderson

1. Notes for the poet Jon Anderson, dead at 67

An insubstantial vision of the Tucson Mountains under nightfall
grows in me like rain, but only in my brain.
Outside my window in Ohio, November blooms one last time,
and there’s a neighbor counting fine, thin, dimes
as she walks to the coffee shop. Dogwood and Sugar
Maple hold onto their leaves. Even if I saw myself

in those trees I would not tell you what I became.
Yet the darkness you brought with you
to Arizona lingers in my words now: you feared nothing
even when you walked among prickly pear
& Palo Verde, alone, thinking yourself a saint—
living in the Sonoran Desert is fool’s luck, after all.

Jon, the only thing your poems taught me
was that we have so little time.
What’s important is that this knowledge gets beaten out
by whomever, the authorities, the man, some
administrator, some teacher who cannot understand
an accent, the way one walks in public,
the way one might shout out “Mayakovsky”
in class to wake all the young sleepers

So I am going to work on this poem until I love it.
And after living with in the attic for three days, unshaven,
unwashed, I am going to take it to a small, tightly knit workshop
in the Catskills where some smart 40-something who went to Bucknell
will re-write it for me in pencil, calling it
sad and knowing, brave about death, unsure of the afterlife.
Later, on a leather couch we’ll talk about the alkali wastes
of Southern Arizona. her small hands
on my thick Mexican shoulders like branding irons.
This, Dear Jon, will shake me away from the eternal sadness
I feel for you, your dwindling away into the night.

2. Of the Land and its Treasures

I live in the land of the apple tree
where the children never really grow old—
here, no one knows I left my first wifey
years ago to be with the woman with whom
I formed the perfect union: Northeast and Southwest
meeting in those naked mating days, unfamiliar
cross-country diagonals when each had
by mistake strayed in too many beds, then
lied over and over, like broken clocks.
You probably know the rest of the story—
this or that university, second-tier’d
& stuck, unlike those great, hunky, state schools
out West. Listen: when the ground water dries out in Tucson
I‘ll walk down to the Mad River for you,
I’ll pick the sweetest red apple to place on your grave.

3. St. Botolph Blues

A bad place to start—outdoors,
on Cumberland Street
we’d light a joint when the girls
had walked down toward
the frozen public garden.
Here, my brother-in-law’s little dogs jittered
on the fresh, dry snow
and each girl took out a Marlboro
as he and I huffered down the thicker
marijuana smoke. One time

we walked all the way
to South Station and back
so that we could take a toke—the sisters
glowed in their post-colonial
educations which would take each
to her own small planet.
When we reached the tracks
they told us that Nick and I
looked like typical Boston
crack heads: our eyes were
orange coals and our mouths
stood open and dry. We couldn’t
stop laughing. But before
we caught colds we were lost

on the invisible safety
of our voyage—we were all white, we were all
white when we passed the J or stood
in front of the old Latin School
rubbing red resin from our fingers
so we wouldn’t reek of anything
but the city, the steam from holes
in the street and the smell of food
cooked and sold in batches on Mass Avenue.

4. Dia de Los Muertos

I’m going to evil acres where I work among the dead—
The songs I sing to them, well, they all line up
In chairs to hear me hit high notes every morn.

And at lunch, among their kind I stuff my mouth
Along with their god, who sits with them, kindly
Holding back any judgment--it is not the place

For judgment. They try so hard to share; sometimes
It's like the crusades, the younger ones sacrificing
Themselves for others or mistaking the older gents

For leaders. Why, they’re not even readers. Every piece
of meat is like baloney or ham cut up. That why there’s
war and why we’re here—to eat the ugly, salted goods

they leave for us, even though these are sometimes only words.

5. Gate’s Pass, Desert Star

The best are killed or wounded by alcohol.
Of the Sonoran desert at night,
one time Ted and I were sitting in the red reaches
looking for Andromeda. There was talk
of a generic finish to the quest—
some of us would drive home
with a bottle of tequila pinned
between the seat and the door.
No one knew where’d
we’d be ten years after he, or I
sighted the twilling mass of starlight
at once like a bright, midnight eye,
like the whole city beyond Gate’s Pass
bundled tightly, a glowing fist ready
to take the last bottle and smash it
onto the scorpion-drenched rocks,

6. For Those Who Believe in the Dark

For those who believe in the dark
I am with you in Schenectady
where the Niagara-Mohawk power plant
fairly glows in the subdural twilight—
in the woods, we’ve all grown suicidal,
we’ve seen the lovely leaves twirl each fall
to the forest floor. Still, there are cracked,
open acorns here too, other travelers
on this one game trail that leads to water.
If you believe in the dark, its powers,
I am with in you this shuddering mood,
where the fog changes to smoke and
forever, in front of the mirror, you search,
you search for some trace of your face,
how your temple once framed your jaw,
how your eyes once knew the air, the light.

7. A Stark Flash of Morning

This morning I’m taking the clear
blue of albuterol into my lungs—
if I get closer to the truth
I’m already dying, the parched desert
of my back spent years ago on labor
that went nowhere. See, I know
you didn’t like us speaking in metaphor,
but the cold hard grain of winter
wheat stuck in my shoe is beginning to ache
of the earth and the mud and the dirt.

Last night I was in the land of the dead,
the acres of dread I craft in my head
when the drugs are working right.
No matter how I tried and tried
what I remember best, now, was the way
my life was framed in the skirted interiors of suburban
homes, junctions with large trees, a warm
breeze from the West that told me I was home.

Anderson, if I remember correctly
what you taught us in class, this poem needs to end
with a stark flash from my life, not the scene itself
but the feeling, as if I could capture for you or anyone else
that moment on ice alone for the first time, not quite
cold, not quite warm under the winter sun floating
way up there, where none of us could go.

8. Bear Hears of Your Death in Manhattan

One time we were talking on the phone. Bear and I
decided to cry because the Times Square
HoJos was empty as a burned-out church
along the Passaic. But then we laughed:
snow was falling in southern Ohio
like the snow falling in Upstate New York—small
white disks I caught on my black sweater that morning.
I told Bear then and there that you had died
as he walked the streets of Soho near Washington Square
Looking for anything to make him happy: food, a bit
of marijuana, even a bottle of cola. He’d been homeless
for three weeks in Manhattan, finally finding a place
to crash with a Navajo chick who’d moved
to the city ten years ago to take care of her brother.
She was a bruja, part Mexican and full of a mean fire,
what she learned of desire on the res. That there was coffee
every morning in her smoky home was enough for him.
But there was no sadness in his voice for you—
of where he’s from, a little Apache ranch
south of Silver City, New Mexico, the dead get up
to dance in their bones when they hear fiddles play.
& there is no pain because the television does not exist,
the television does not exist, it is not shit where
his buffalo graze on a rough green set.

9. The News from Hatch, New Mexico

In my last passage through Tucson
I let the remains of the Mount Lemmon fire
fill me with ash. With wild ash.
I tried so hard, when I was there,
in your presence, to build the kinds of poems
leading to lightning. The simple story of my departure
rings like the Catholic bell in the school where I teach—
Jon, I tied to reach you through the undistilled language
of opposites I learned from the New Mexican farmers
I saw every September, driving sacks of green chile and fresh
meat to the market along the Rio Grande.
I could not help but notice their voices,
the way they talked to each other in small restaurants
where the old and young sat together waiting
for coffee and huevos rancheros, their eyes flashing
with humility when the sun rose from the Sierra
Oscura for the millionth time. Back then, we had not read
your poems or anything from Iowa that hinted
of another world beyond those mountains.

H. Peers into The Mirror of Tezcatlipoca


I have my dogs, my companions
every time I draw down the slope
of a line that leads to the smoke
chamber--I see the future unfold,
untrue lies spreading like delicate foil.
Then there’s the oil I put in the tank--
the deserts I kill and the thick
groves of cottonwood I depict
where none had been before,
make my gift seem seldom and sick
with abuse: how else to write tomes but while
tanked, if only to fool the older fools
that you’re good at what you do. You’re
good at what you do.

Ohio Garden Season Matrix

In this season, this month,
the root of my life has grown
in the earth, a pleasure to behold--
once again, facing spring I cling
to dirt like a new vegetable
waiting to be nourished.

The simple mask of God hasn't appeared.
Blind to the sun, I sit
in the garden waiting to be plucked,
believing in rescue, believing in green hope.
Reassured by warm light on my face

spring is right in planting in my brain
a crazy seed that blooms like a blue
morning glory. I continue to call your name--
Darrell Dillon, lost to the flames of some unknown,
your curtain call caught us all off guard.

Now in this chasm of love, I believe
we were kids when we last spoke.
Now the common crab-grass fades,
the journey Westward has ended

and the one God who rests
in the clouds can speak your name.

Dream Job 27:

As evil Albuquerque dwindles
in my rear view mirror I’m reminded
of the dead I’ve left behind, withered
by the blast of sand and heat endemic
to the high desert. Here and there,
among the sharp peaks, the scene repeats
itself in petals strewn to celebrate
the coming of our Lady to the shady

bosque where cottonwood blooms in April.
Alone in the front seat of my imaginary car
I rear back to let the dumb ride pass
into neutral, along the railroad tracks:
what hope I have for the future lies
resolute on the backs of those who’ve stayed behind--
from here in the Ohio wilderness I hear
the rain at night trimming through
the outskirts of Bernalillo county,
I make a pact to observe the loss I feel
every moment I’m away from the steely
shapes that mark my past like branding irons.