The American dream had wheels,
Wheelwrights heating rims to fit
Linseeded spokes,
Conestogas, prairie schooners,
Bicycles and trains,
Fords and Maseratis, Harley Earle Impalas,
Coal trucks, semis, interstates
That separate the morning.

Bare ground gets soft in the cold rain,
Turning ankles and slowing work,
Freezing the overnight tracks
Of possum and raccoon, brushed in frost
For  the morning cattle feeding,
Before the school bus and lessons,
Drilled paddle of the principal,
Confessions of the miscreants.
Nothing more simple than the heart,
Which warms the lungs so breath is seen.
The hens don't peck, prefer bagged grain,
The steady work of laying eggs
That disappear with doorknobs in the nest.
What's the poet getting at?

Such elegance and opulence
Beneath this highway overpass,
Where rocks provide the sustenance,
As winter culls the underclass;
Gimcrackery of transients,
Guitars and spoons and mattresses.
Police come charged with striking tents.
You can't live here, the city says.
One level up, on 2nd Street,
Old cars and vans make living space
For down-and-outs who still compete,
And teach their kids to ask God's grace.
This kingdom come, of what's been done--
Earth daughter, mother, father, son.

Not surprising, really, that she
Never heard from Kevin, though he
Promised if he could he would keep
Calling, after his heart went still,
The inevitable outcome
The cardiologist assured
Them would be soon, maybe three months,
Maybe four.  He lasted seven.
She wore black for the first long year,
And listened close to everywhere
His voice might speak the slightest word,
Watched the fingerlings swim downstream
In the waters he used to fish,
As if one might turn back and look
At her with swift recognition,
Beside her in that icy stream.

What calling beckons long gone memories,
Those scattered prodigals, sad mother's son
And father's daughter, sailing troubled seas,
To fight upstream a washed out riverrun,
Convinced that something  not yet understood
Will recommend this fallen universe
Of wood and nails to shelter brotherhood,
Through mothers' tears and winter's harsh reverse,
Inspire another backwood symphony
Of blue and green?  Come over now and see.

Somehow the words you whispered then
Seemed nothing worth remembering.
Not so the flavor of your skin,
Or how you set the phone to ring
At my house when he called your line
From jail to see if you were home,
While all the time you lay inclined
On feather pillow, mattress foam.
We borrowed time from userers,
Who claim their interest near the heart,
And reappear as raveners,
Insistent while the days grow short.
Would now those words could buy some time,
Spent here in this outdated rhyme.

Unless these clouds move out tonight,
There'll come no moon to wish upon,
No drawing down Diana's light
By bacchanalian devil's spawn--
The only sound  a cat's footsteps,
And our quick breath, almost unseen--
No other watcher here except
The wolf that winters here between
This woods and that one, biding time,
As lovers shiver, called outside,
Through sacred oak and profane pine,
Against the forest's darker side,
Now slanted on a recent fall,
Unfettered as this lupine call.