horse flood

(dayton, oh : april, 17 1978)

here there is a standing gravestone with nothing more than my name inlayed upon it : this past saturday i sat with a doctor who recorded my blood pressure & then inquired, are you certain that you are alive...right now? : holy holy holy is a home blessed with the arrival of a new life : & handsome handsome are the eager spring dogwoods now flowering : the others, the cherry blossoms, are quicker to turn to shit before summer : several months ago, while driving through a north seattle neighborhood with _____, we both confessed our immaculate dream of a domestic mysticism : we pictured our separate lives within the walls of each house passed : but i knew the face of the woman with me, just behind the doors, both of us sitting at the inherited dining room tables & the ones in the kitchens, crafted from antique woods that i reclaimed from rotting farmland barns over the course of several consecutive sundays : she would walk during these days : take the $1,200 baby stroller for a walk : wheels taller than any baby : at 6 i will still suck my thumb : at 14 i will break it : 4 years later i'll write a bad check to fill my nose : i'll lick the collected dust from the backside of a toilet bowl and not feel my face for hours : each of the world's flowers is made with more purpose than i (st.) : the heart knows no warning signal (m. de chazal) : every so often my brain begins bouncing off the inside walls of my cranium before finally settling again :

a capacious oak tree began to fill my belly at a most fragile age : & now a capricious horse bellies up to its trunk seeking shade : those first days had long since squeezed my mind's eye dry : i'm now left with only these two-- snow-blind & listing far across a black prairie :