The Goön Folk.

Their pilgrimage began before the light,
Before the squabbles of the little birds
Pilgrims forswore. And they were going where?
To where the road concluded. Since this was
Their latter days, that just might mean the sea,
The culmination, surely, of strange strands,
Pounding a plainsong once, twice, dot, dot, dot.
They’d rather it would end against a wall
Invisible to those of little faith,
Studded with jasper, joined without a joint,
And crowned with fire or with Dagon’s roc
In chains, something spectacular, without
Curios at the exit, something none
Knew substantives sufficient for. They brought
A change of shirt, a charger for the phone,
And water double-filtered to remove
Impurities. They sang car tunes without
The words, not all the words. They thought they’d left
The word behind, the first rest stop enclosed
By plastic fence. The map said, You Aren’t There.

As Numberless As the Stars

Hagar didn’t care for the manchild much,

The one whose dam she wasn’t.  In the star-

Personable nighttime sky she reckoned

The number of descendants he’d been promised,

And every one an uninvited guest.

Me, I try to avoid the sin of counting.

It leads to lust and envy.  I have named

More women than I knew, and they are glad,

Or so they say, when they imagine me.

They think about the child who isn’t there,

The period they never missed, the pain

Promised them, that they passed on, and they smile

And smooth their hair and think about the days

When boys would gasp because they happened by.

Laird and His Manner

The word is out that Laird is back in town,
Or maybe not-—he doesn’t advertise.
Cagey as always, full of little bits
Of wisdom-lit and recipes and still
A handsome highwayman, he’s double belted
With bullets, bone-knobbed pliers, and a compass.
He sings too loudly, talks too loudly, eats
Peculiar combinations. He won’t lodge
With those who need him; he won’t go away,
Not before night. Or autumn. He makes rules
As need requires. Once he wouldn't budge
Until the last pin-oak leaf had detached.
One of us climbed the tree and shook it down,
Unable to face any more of Laird.

Tonight we wait for resurrection men.
We’re told the sod will open in the park,
And frontier mamas, babies dead of croup,
And gambling dudes in rotted vests will rise.
There are agnostics, certainly, but Laird,
He has his ways. Leastways, he keeps things warm.

Even the trees have changed since these were laid
In certainty of dark and dank. I shall
Fulfill some promise, Laird says, or I’ll bear
Witness to unfulfillment. There are new
Stones since then, most likely trucked in from Creede.
Do you believe in Everlasting Life?
He asks me. I do not. What I believe
Has not changed much since I was 17,
When I first said that absence was a gift.

There is no sound, except the trucks that leave.
The park is closed. The turf lies still. And Laird
Is nowhere you can find. He’s been and gone,
The cartilage of stories. What a waste,
The scent of pine borne past us on the breeze.