“WELL, ROLL ON, BUDDY, DON’T YOU ROLL TOO SLOW”

Sun out, sun in, cloud gobbets up high, mist candles down below,

Start, and the start of the end of things.

Perhaps. But who knows.

                                             Recluse joys are only skin deep.

If my life were a dream, I’d be warmer and happier.

But I’m on a different road,

                                       mist and sun, and the dust of this world.

Late dusk by now and no birds, what do you know, no birds.

The old have no hiding place.

If it’s going to come, you can’t outrun it. Depend

On nothing and keep your joy-bag just out of sight.

Two nights till the full moon, a little soft on the lower left,

A ghostly radiance,

                                   almost there and almost not there.

The animals know this and sift away, but we have no clue.

Our lives are in ruins, we think, and they seem to be.

The night will not settle them

Or raise them or cover their spare parts.

                                                                      Who will discover them

And say what our seasons were?

Who will astound himself one night in the lee of the full moon

In the milky forest, in the scattered and milky forest?