I
after leaving my arms this morning and
burning the sky blue,
you render horizons merely
something to fly between
when you are here
[when you are home]
so that we might
make sense of you.

you settle orange tropicana florida like
an age-burnt photograph of a tangerine
being pressed between
two classic leather-backs
of the Western Canon;

soothing fruit juices mingling among the
heartburn of dream dust that
settles down from the peaks of the ages;

citric fiction.

you are pressed up against
my dirty windshield at dawn
before you move on.

the center console is cluttered like
sunday service church pews with
blue cigarette packs, empty, and
the black rot of bananas and
the grease of grazing fingers on the steering wheel and
the local station talk show and
i am empty at the passenger seat for
all the failed attempts at phone calls.

i think that i am lonely.

i find a full pack of cigarettes,
blue and black now as
i appear to be against
the violence of your memory and
the brightness of your inevitability.




II
i think of your frigid winter absences.

a straight shot stand of trees
whose wet whale-skin grey and green
against the snow
is frozen at attention;
naked and unfooled by
the night's elegant reflections
of you.

except one tree whose trunks
lean East defiantly,
with long-fingered silhouettes
in intimate ups and downs with the breezes,
whispering,
"gravity!"

[in orbit, i am a product of your inevitability.]

and imagine the human spirit
was a galaxy!

[but home has always been most heavy.]

in spirals and pulls like
backward smoke.

[my tired limbs move ceaselessly.]




III
i am struggling for my own light
-forgotten Citrus Canons-
when i apply a cigarette and
a spark
to mark the maturing morning.

at the center of its smoke finally
i find good company.

i turn the engine over;
a gnarled face growling loudly
mad and toothless under the
winter cap of a poet.

his old dentures smack together like
a clucking chicken,
gurgling gravel in a gullet that
jumps in the wind of a cool highway
with horizons for eyes
as he calms.

i am on my own,
automobiling out into space and
my car takes turns like a dreamer.

you claim clear skies carelessly and
i exchange the cost of another day
for the hope that
i might begin to spin a galaxy
with just a glimpse
of my shadow
against you.