The hillside--
a cardboard box.
And companies cut with exact-o knives along the edges,
removing the center.
Then, carry the useful pieces to me, for my white pine realty.
Leave the scraps to warm under an unshielded sun.  
Burn, blacken, gradually regrow.

To the man I won't ever see again:
I had lost my mate in a sea of similar looking citizens
and you offered me bread.
We broke and bit into it.
We commented on the subtly of rosemary within it.
I will never see you again,
but you fed me.

I look to cover my head with a hat
and call it a day
but my hair is too long because it has to be.
I long to protrude,
but I enfold, biologically,
because it has to be.

To be hugged by a narrow railway and a wide river
is to be loved by man and God.

Each time my eyelids close
I commit a new photograph to memory.
I hope I have enough space.

There is ugly in every beautiful town.
There are stone quarries, electrical wires, and spittles of trash
on every forsaken corner of the United States.
There is a cloud machine amidst fields of green
and wind mills with long milling legs
that spread like the slashing ceiling fan
in my hometown living room.

There are brown patches of grass
and seasoned bearded hobos, too.
There are minimum wage jobs, and minimum wage folks
waging the war against crisp, shuttered homes .02 miles
down the way.

Billboards, more billboards
crowd the view.
Dealerships, car dealerships
speckle urban seas.
Me, I do live for variety.

When all else fails,
cover me up in literary magazines,
filled with screen-print photographs and short stories.  
Light me up,
fill me up
with egg center yellows and humble rosemary greens.
Let her words, pained and smart, come out
of her mouth,
dance across the dashboard,
(eyes cast downward)
and onto my tongue.

When all else fails give me a light rain
and an intermittent run.
It's okay if it's overcast, but let me be sunshine.