A bridge in Vermont
is not a bridge too Vermont.
It's a postcard
with heart-red snow
and the white knuckles
of an orphaned babe...
twitching in a manger...
but singing.

All glory to the smoke
and the iron sun; too blunt.
It's a porcelain shard
of hard-dread luck
and a dark hustle to the bottom
of the sea... in waves -
wishing even stranger...
but undreaming.

yet amazed.

II

We are the brick and the butterfly.

You migrate
as i nest in a shambles.
As i launch -
into stuck.
You go from shore to shore
above me.
As I plunge into -
stealth at rest.

III

We are the thing that ponders -
the other thing that wanders off....
And we know the color
of our grief.

It is Ironically blue
and rueful.
But it smiles inside -
Like a dairy cow
with idiot teats.

We are unfit to miss the Other; Forever.
But our astrology is fickle as a lamb
at a crucifixion.
We have our gods, but cannot barter
for a Lesser One than Love.

So we're condemned to our devotion
like a locomotive heart
to a groove in
a chasm
at last.

And just enough.

There are things I no longer need to know
Things you do not confide
It is as if you always sleep when we are apart
You no longer dream
As if there is nothing inside
Nothing to sort out in your mind
No life to tell
Whatever I once said to you
Freely without recourse
It is not your affair
You do not look to me for help
You do not mingle your thoughts with my own
I have to accept that you have moved on
Even though I know your tears will wait for me
Sad pools where your eyes drown every night

On new year eve when the sun on the west hung low
And the east wind on dead leaves blow
I paced to the yellow woods
And sat on my favourite wood
Where not long after I fell into a trance
Not of any divine trace
But a dream from my person
And I saw a vision backwards:
365 days ago, not long ago
I was on the same spot
For the familiar new year ritual
That of writing my aspirations
My fickle fingers wrote my dreams on the hard earth
On the passing sands of time
But no traces of them was left
Perchance carried by the furious wind
To the store house of wasted words
I continued in the vision backwards
When I heard a voice from me saying
" Don't write your dreams on sand
Write them on your heart "
I woke from my short trance
When the crimson moon was awake above
And the night owl hooting echoed through the woods
Left the woods without performing my ritual
Because i heard a vision backwards
" Don't write your dreams on sand
Write them on your heart."

Have you walked a sweetcorn field in June
When Georgia's skies are bluer than blue
The music of waist high plants stirred
in the breath of the Gulf
Gatherings of wild turkey , raucous crows
and flocks of mourning doves
Follow songbirds of all shape and size along
the woodland edge
Traipse dirt roads to the Indian Creek ledge* ...

The bottom land was made
for slide guitar and mason jars
Water from the 'River Jordan' with
blue notes , alms for vagabonds ,
I'm quite familiar with their songs
Nor am I the first untouchable touched by
by the Live Oak riverbanks , I belong
on this bank recalling hardscrabble decades ,
a marriage without love , a thirty- eight token
from a hollow point self medicated Grandfather , Father ,
and two uncle problem solution , I dilute these memories
with Painters **** and the cold April waters of the *****
Within the mud on these two feet rest the others , reduced to
dirt and river water , fed on by trees , dung beetles , tiger mosquitoes , bobcats , snappers and coyotes
Cool topwater holding the Milky Way in her lap ,
air filled in pine sap , 'brackwater' and red mud
My cigarette , my **** , my shotgun* ..