I.
The flowers are dry now
two days after I picked them
from a trash can in the dirty alley.
White with violet edges,
they didn’t belong
exactly where they were.
I have many prayers
circling my hands.
II.
Bigger than I’d expected,
that beaver lay
like a large dog
rolled up against
concrete fencing the bridge.
I touched his fur,
left a dry rose, felt
someone had to.
Trucks were in a hurry.
Under strong sunshine, his fur
radiated cool.
III.
A voice rose sharply
ripping off the night silence,
caroming between red brick
buildings before rising
high enough to dissolve.
I rode it three blocks
arrested by its gall,
then lost it on a time curve.
IV.
In the dream you died
beside me. I wish
you would quit
shagging night roads–
I wake sticking
to cotton, sweat cold.
V.
Cars lined up all the way
on back to Grayling Creek
waiting for men to clear
viscera and motorcycle parts
off black tar.
Giant Sand rocking,
earth-roughened brown fingers
tapping, I watched buffalo
graze an oxbow
of the Madison
remembering,
ten years ago,
a double rainbow
that touched down here;
apparently not a mark for
this guy’s pot of gold,
this man whose heart
whose brain
bit the road.
The ambulance
drove away slowly,
slowly…
a bad sign
so I crossed myself.
VI.
Out on the island birds sing
all winter long
disregarding cold snow
that hangs them up in trees.
Squirrels don’t get hit
by cars, nor beavers
and the deer are shy.
Whole days move aside
when I walk there,
remembering rich bouquets
of woody solitude
while fear drives by
overhead on I-90,
reasonably and prudent.
VII.
The dogs hung out
catching wind, wild
with the odor of cattle
in their warm snouts.
Sixteen hours north
of my own take-off,
curiosity met the horizon,
flat interest,
roadkill.
orphan poems 