Beaver Creek Road

No need to get
into the stewpot
with the sacrificial horse

these days of course more
a stain of Bovril hot
from a tartan thermos

but the battle of the trees
or the battle of the letters
or the battle between the

forest & the letters & the trees
has got me losing sleep
& repeating past dawn--

I am the falcon
I fly blind
through a progressive sky--

crisp as Hampton Hawes circa 1955--
Hermosa Beach,
my tiny harmonium gently weeps

a pastel streak
down a marble cheek
while the evening refuses

to abandon its swatches
& come in out of the rain,
a lighthouse in trousers passes

sans eagle-eye motif
but a copper moon dangling
over a heap of crushed felt

between his ass & the saddle,
loaded with six empties
& the cooler cooler cooler

the Fargo's likely to buck
so switch to premium
for the Parkway--

a circling bird
I cannot help but overhear
your hesitations

what's said's
a hammer falling
on an empty chamber

old furniture
unlikely to remember
I refuse to look--

Joanna to Goldfinch
a row of Specials
nestled in a ravine

a set of hoops
in every 45 degree driveway
where the sun don't crest

till one at least
but no trash utopia
blackberry the stream

tended to such a goatproof-bridged
fare-thee well
that coming out onto

Shenton the residual
good will had sanded
the industrial off the park

before the looming
crystal waterwork mini-lake motel
put it back in.