City Limits

Here on the west edge, the town turned its back on the west,

gave up the promise, nodded goodbye to a highway

that narrowed away, and with a sunset-red bandanna

bid the shimmering tracks go on, go on.

Go west, young man, cheered Horace Greeley, and west

rattled the new country, rocking along through the sparks,

the cattle dying, the children sick, the limits

always ahead like a wall of black mountains.

But the steam cooled and condensed, the pistons rusted.

The dead weight of trunks thudded onto the platform,

bursting their leather straps. Generations spilled out

and we settled for limits: strung fence wire, drew plat maps

with streets squared to the polestar, passed finicky laws,

built churches true: the bubble centered in the spirit level.

We let the plumb bob swing till it stopped with its point

on the spot where we were, where we were to remain.

The frontier rolled on ahead; we never caught up

with whatever it was, that rolling wave or weather front,

those wings of cloud. The news came back, delivered by failure,

a peach-crate of rags, a face caved in over its smiles.

We thrived on the failure of others; rich gossip

flowered like vines on the trellises. On porches,

what once had been dream leaned back on its rockers.

We could have told them. We could have told them so.

The bean-strings ran back and forth through the vines

defining our limits. Children played by the rules:

cat’s cradle, Red Rover. Morticians showed up

with wagons of markers. The dead lay in their places.

Our horses grew heavy and lame tied to pickets

and our wheel-rims rusted and sprang from their spokes.

Fire-pit became city, its flashing red pennants strung

over the car lot. We signed on the line at the bank.

What we’d done to the Indians happened to us.

Our hearts had never been in it, this stopping;

we wanted a nowhere but gave ourselves over to gardens.

Now our old campsite limits itself on the west

to the lazy abandon of sunset — a pint bottle

whistling the blues in a dry prairie wind. Next to

the tracks, turning first one way and then another,

a switch with red eyes wipes its mouth with a sleeve.