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heading for the tidal pools after ranger dies
we’d been nursing that cat a couple years, an
unacknowledged rehearsal for my own,
seeing how each of us took it in
and then moved on, and now
driving the long slope to a county seat,
the morning fields lined with windrows,
the first good cut after the last stabs
of another long wet winter,
we pass the slow genuflection of barns,
pastures offering up cow-calf pairings,
and then the main street banners for kids
who’ve opted to serve elsewhere as
we check the storefronts for survivors
with one of their prisons shutting down,
a smalltown America, deeply harbored
time and again in this long day’s drive,
a ceaseless ocean ahead, another sun’s
farewell to the shore, not to catch the easy
eternals but more for those hours when
the blue-black mollusks have
closed up shop, sea stars and anemone feeding
below, to sing out our kinward hopes for
every life that labors and fails, labors
and fails to know itself. |
