there was smoke coiling the sky, dust and rubbish
windblown in an alley, a light rain beginning to fall,
once a black Cadillac rusted in a field of milkweed,
October snow come down over Lake Huron,
once a young man disappeared and was found
days later a hundred and fifty miles away alone
weeping near the railroad tracks in Carey, Ohio,
those thoughts, those days, consciousness expended
determining the value of wage labor, the long-eared owl
in the red maple watches a father in his living room chair
weeping, furies and Molochs, hot-eyed comedies,
the shy and kind one’s mercies redeem me,
old-souled premonitions, eternities repeated
in a red and black flow.
