EARLY MORNINGS
It was country so flat...

MOON ROAD
Starting out along the beat-up asphalt...

BUSRIDE
We are rolling. Snow and stubble...

GOING HOME LATE
It's late and the clock downtown...

YOU KNOW
You know who...

LATE OCTOBER
I am rain-tranced, fed with sleep....

URIA BYLER'S ELEGY FOR PALMER LEHMAN
Palmer Lehman has been gone for quite a few years....

A GAME
Well worn, stinking...

FOOT-WASHING
. . . having loved his own which were in the world...

EAST ON 46
Fog spiders out its net...

MEMORIAL DAY: DIGGING THE GARDEN
Just less than spade deep...

R.T.
went out of...

ON THE ISLAND
This guy drinks a lot and rides his legs...

THOSE COWS: THEIR DOUBLE LIFE
They come ambling around the shagbark stand...

HERBAL
Call it Cleavers, Jupiter's Nut...

BUZZARD
Ten turns above the woods...

FLYING WITH THE CROWS
Enter March. Wind scants...

HERONS STAND
Herons stand on stick legs...

CONFUSION
Those horses have necks...

TO TURTLE
The round house and the...

MY ANCESTORS
My ancestors abound within me...

ATLEE MULLET'S EXPERIENCE
I too had an experience ...

THE TEMPTATION
The tree was hollow and I...

TEETH
Blank white. My coat is full of wind....

WHOSE MOON
What about that bird...

A NEW WORLD
Waking up, I see it's all different....

FLAT LAND
At the edge of the world, the sun burns....

GNAW
I may have made a mistake here...

BUSRIDE

We are rolling. Snow and stubble
fields all around, vision bleaker
than I can tell. There is no
horizon, only leakage towards heaven
of vapors the earth becomes.
I haven't traveled this way
in years, not since I was broke
and twenty, but this kind of riding
stays the same and I can feel myself slipping
towards fourteen years ago
each time the blackbirds
step up from corn rows
into air. Pinions clatter, cold
pinches skin delicate as grass. They carry
their hunger with them in flight . . . 
Your face had the same oval
my lips make closing towards a vowel.
Its shape goes everywhere with me
thin as paper.


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