Streetlights At Six

In the long haul, the misery of waiting
the shade of trees in circumference
grown under me, an acre of years.
There will be flags of constance,
stories to tell, receipts and neighbors
to bicker over parking space.
I am the homeless I'll say. A good excuse.

These five caravans of Atlantics,
the same way only different because
that was then and this is now,
the road has changed. We have
declared new things. flipped a page. A new poem.
The drowning man in Canyon Lake waved, then sunk.
The others thought he was having fun,
an honest choice. A newspaper headline.

Leaving is always the same,
goodbye to the fog and a hundred shapes of bread
in foreign markets, illogical kitchens.
Hello to the usual rain, the typical bravery
of fire departments, every single white stone
a planned community, in and out of arcadian doors.
Certain kinds of things in storage. A sacred dementia.

To lie down in a new bed all alone, the waking
dreams of a family of girls over there,
where are they and the boy with a missing finger?
All moving along, grown up, some of them dead and perhaps.
The widow with the sick child,
a disordered inheritance, what's her name?
There was a cop next door,
a wife beater. A closet full of guns.
Marina's blue eyes were the sea,
she sold life insurance
below the irony of borrowed sugar. I could see her.

A dock to which I could return.
The Tigris and Euphrates.


That's how it goes, you come and you go,
everyone comes and they go, burning and drowning.
A new world order, a simple peace plan.
A second marriage and a third, beer with friends.
Year after year labelled first to thirty first
in Gregorian. Everyone is bringing 1980
to the pot luck. Streetlights at six.

Xeroscaping. Lawnmowing. Post offices.
Little Debbie cakes, homes and gardens
up the yingyang. A certain kind of heaven
but no where like home, clicking my heels
and they don't know where to go:
Witch of the East, Witch of the North,
one shiney the other vindictive.
It was always about them. Then someplace else.