Flew In With The Boxcars

I come on
Like a train chasing the sunset’s
Pink and orange scream,
Shadows dancing around me.
I come on
Across the prairies to Kansas,
Past the sick and fat cows
And the flooded plains.
I come on
To where trees
Have been broken
By straight-jackets of ice.

I fly in with the boxcars,
A trail of ash and smoke
Across the middle states,
America like a funeral pyre.
I am reborn with
Wind through the wheat,
From the land.
Remnants of tracks
Become highways
That crack through the seasons.
Roads of gravel
Are washed away and renewed.
North of town
There is a place
Where Earth’s arch splits your mind
Beholding so much edgeless sky,
Up to your chin in gravity.
Nature earns its karma,
With cyclones, wind and warmth
With savage, electric nails
Ravaging trees, homes,
Graveyards.

My babies are torn from me,
Leaving me to
Scrub crayon markings from
Still standing walls,
Washing ten months of dirty dishes.

My love is an arrow
Shaped, strung and shot
With its point
Already embedded in its target.
I struggle in linear time
As I have no faith in it.
This is the only love I have.
I try to explain it.

I keep flying into love
Which illuminates you and consumes me.

I take lives with my love like this-
With stones,
With photographs misplaced,
With electronic messages
I have by now deleted.

I have learned that
With rare exception
The brave have no one to love
But those who are afraid.