Light crawls timid over fields
from some vague source behind the hills,
too gray to be the sun. Any morning
brings the same, a test of stamina,
your capacity to live the long day out
paced by the hesitant river. No chance
you might discover someone dead.
Always you curse the limited goods
in the store and your limited money.
You learn to ignore the wind leak
in your shack. On bad days in the bar
you drink until you are mayor.
On neutral days you hope the school
is adequate though you’re no father
and your wife left decades back
when the train still ran. You look
hours down the track. Perhaps a freight.
Only the arrogant wind. You think
the browns are running, hitting bait.
You have waited and waited for mail,
a wedding invitation, a postcard
from New York. You reread the book
about red lovers one more time,
pages torn and the cover gone.
On good days festive cars streak by.
You laugh and wave. Sun on blacktop
whirrs like ancient arrows in the sky.
Cattails flash alive the way they did
when lightning told them, die.
You catch the river in its flowing
never flowing frozen glide.
The small clear river jitters on
to join the giant green one lumbering
a definite west, a lake released.
Your heroes go home green. Bison
on the range are reproducing bears.