5-28-2014

All that stink and rust
alongside Calumet City,

Alongside
Potato Creek,

Not
harmonized with
church windows
purposed or

given
to distortion;

not filtering the
setting sun or
yard limit signal lights;

Not,
and

None of it.
None of it.

And telling
stories
of shoulders earned
in dusk or

I have run

alongside.

Or

I am running,

alongside, and

pulling, breathless,

fractals heavy
and still.

Behind all that I
have been given;

gathering
along the twilight wilds

beautiful pushes;

found meanings,
remembered.

My boys awake with
terrifying
wonderments
upon their tongues;
sputtering
in the fields of my once-owned miles,

gilt-edged
transcriptions
spread out
upon years
and bedspreads
and flowering heads
of cottonwoods
near hard-kept fires,

my explanations
numb-mouthed and
liquored,

and
whispered,

and

filled with my father
and his fatherlessness.