Houses

They’ve been around in dreams a long time now,
those houses where nobody lives, hidden
along long stretches of field, accessible
if you run alone down dirt and gravel roads

late in the afternoon when shadows start
to sift like sand. I think you’ll know the place
better than I. Maybe you’ll finish this poem.
Here’s my attempt to hand it over to you.

The time. The place. The sound. They fade from me
as my pen scratches across the ragged page
and the cat lounges, observing every move.
By the time I climb the stairs to sit before

my glowing screen, how many days and years
will have gone by? But only you will know.
Someone is sitting by an upstairs window,
head bent beside a desk lamp, writing. You knock.

No other houses show. There is no answer.
You cross the dusty living room. A grove
of alder trees, entwined with vines, appears
out back—on the mantle, a clock without a face.
The crickets scrape their stridulation from
the shade. The nighthawk with its plaintive cry
and rush of wings appears at the right time.
Nothing stirs upstairs. You look in every room.

The moonlight shines through a far window. Now
the poem begins. The anticipated turn.
The much awaited answer from the trees.
Here is the moment when translation begins.

Heart Prayer

I really over-shared that night,
with tinsel, trinkets, and strings—
it all came out huddled beside
that documentary about a lost boy

proving he was there all over again.
It was a yard with screens, twitches, and blades,
the springs and wheels running down
that ran the mechanism running me,

a broken-livered rhythm coming on
like the fog I breathed when I was six;
I’m losing half an inch a year since then
while others tick and trek along.

The soft-talker I followed all this time
speaks long pauses over rice, and my longing
never ends up belonging, nor does any
other-where ever shine like foil.

Like the old man said: Never stay
where you’re welcome. He was right
on cue, his stupefaction coming on
to me, so here I go off script.

I’m my own Linear B, which I can’t read.
It was the moon-landing night, the old man
shot cardiac sparks, and sure enough I was next,
out walking fields in mud and rain

somewhere between God and none.
What difference does it make, some transcendental
desire suffering the universe
while planets reel in empty space?

Either way, by the time those dots of light
get here, their stars have moved or gone,
and here I drag this thing I am along
with shadows that are me and that are not.