Find the river
where you find the trees,
past the flatland
past the sleepy town
beyond the gold wall
a trail of silver leaves will  
lead you
down the bank
Find the faint smell of mud
and the stirring of naked branches
prickly dead grass and trees
littering the *****—
Some cracked and white and crooked
most brown and brittle
and all of it wild
and weaving and spinning
a web of shadows
A crow may caw and fly into the blue
A red squirrel may scavenge in the dirt and skirt up the tree and pause in the crook
and watch you watching it
A tall cottonwood may creak as you
trespass under it’s hooked branches
and you’ll find it
its tarnished silver rippling
curving and swelling
like a snake
biding its time

and you have only to take
off your day and
put on your night.
Your worries can't
go to bed with you;
they'd never fit,
not even in a California king.
So, you dust off your dreams
and shrug them on,
old and familiar
And you when you lie in bed, sleep soundly
because you've never given one dream away.

Out for a walk today, you're looking out a ***** window.
You squint against the overhead sun and see a sky,
ripped and faded light-blue like denim--
the clouds wispy and thread-bare
receding into the white horizon.
Here the sky meets golden-brown grass,
flattened and dry like a pancake.
On the road, the cars dusty and dull,
not even the clean ones shine that much,
but they still sound loud and rushing
like high wind or running water.
You wouldn't be able to tell it's spring here,
except for what it says on the calendar.
Well, the snow is gone and left last-year's trash;
plastic ******* and grocery bags
litter the ditch and empty lots.
It bothers you, so you focus on the patches that look green,
under the brittle stems of old grass.
This is what spring is to you:
dirt, dust, dead grass, and
Marlboro packs and canisters of chew on the sidewalk.
It's the planting of seed in an empty lot,
watering the dry soil,
and clearing out whatever winter buried.
Here, the first stirring of life clears the dust from the window.