you were there, smiling,
greeting me with a handshake, a half hug

your band was preparing to play
for a wedding, a celebration within a celebration

the chair was never there, the one
you kicked from under your feet, forty years past

I wish...but we know it was,
and we know a young bride found you hanging

suspended in a time we called simpler
though it wasn't--suffering still our common denominator

but last night, in my slanderous slumber  
I defied the fates, brought you back to life

one where the chair, the cord were never
there, and you didn't take this life's longest leap

the thirty three inches through a silent
air, where you landed with muted screams

only to return in dreams, to say you were
doing well, without the woe of all these years

the rest of us were left to endure

little remains
of my grandfather's house:
raw rafters, warped planks with hints
my uncle invested in paint

the windows all gone, time
and twisters took them, and much
of the roof--what is left of that sags,
a silent submission to gravity

a woodstove survives, cold
to the touch, with no memory
of the fire it once birthed, the precious
prairie timber which fed it

now it knows only mourning
doves' song; winged squatters
unperturbed by my presence, as if
they know I lay no claim to now

the old boards have stories
I will never hear: the birth of babes,
reading the Word by kerosene lamps,
the last breaths of men

the songbirds may know,
but they woo the living in flight--a
future of nesting and fertile eggs; they
owe no belated dirge to long lost kin

so keen were his senses he could
discern differences in grains of sand,
hear gulls' calls long before others, and
recall the number of footprints
he left on his stretch of beach

yet he spoke not a word
since she passed, stolen from him
by a fever he felt from across the room,
while others had to lay hands
on her to know

the doctor would come
and go, whispering words to his father,
not realizing the boy could hear: "typhoid"
lay in his lexicon along with "suffering"
and "death"

then the priest and prayer
too late for the woman--there
for the father, son, and her ghost;
beguiling words like "comfort"
and "eternal life"

the boy did not reveal
being mute was of his volition
allowing less sentient beasts to believe
his silence was a manner to grieve
"ruse" he also knew

months did pass, and the
others implored him to speak;
he would return again and again
to his shore, where he heard
wings and winds and more

but there no creature
asked for his tongue to move;
his naked feet in the surf were enough
and when his tears wedded the waters
the sea made not a sound

lone falcon high in flight, what grid of ground
is magnet to your sight?

what engrams form in fine folds
hidden in your skull?

do you recall all that passes below
on a fleeting flat earth?

do you see my shovel fighting
the stubborn caliche?

to put my wife and child in dead dirt,
before you or your brethren dive

perhaps you will take pity on me, and see
you have other places to light:

the parched prairies around me,
where I pray the creator has left
you more tantalizing temptations
for your talons

a flock of them we call a ******,
though not what I did to ****** men
I shot on the Mekong, who did nothing
but startle me a muggy morn  

I watched them float,
face down in primordial mire,
not far from the wire, which
split their world from mine  

birds came by noon
greedy passerines perching, pecking
on black clad backs; they sang not a word
of thanks to me

though I had made a meal of men,
for those who drop from blue skies--not even
when the flesh pulled swiftly from bone, and
blood flowed silent over their talons

July 4, 1970, Mekong Delta, Vietnam

he looks to that place
hidden in the grey folds and
white matter where the words
and images are birthed

all he sees are blue beans:
jelly beans, frijoles beans, kidney
beans--all as blue as robin's eggs,
strewn on a pitch black field

he waters them to see
if they will grow, for surely
this field is of magic or
at least dreams

but, it seems, nothing
sprouts; the fallow field remains
the same: a bed for countless
beads of blue

he lays his stylus down,
a sword he wielded for naught,
closes his eyes for a final view,
and all he sees is blue

when he
was a young man,
come round up,
they would hit
the trail dead dark
before daybreak;

without a morsel
of moonlight,
he would follow
the rider in front
of him, watching
the glow of the cowboy's
hand-rolled,

while
he puffed away
on a store bought
Lucky Strike, to guide
the cowboy
on his tail;

this beacon,
a bead orange  
in a sea of black,
allowed for silence
among men

who listened
for the lowing
of the beasts
they were charged
to capture, and brand
for slaughter