pale meat, tumble through waist-high grasses

without reason, find shade and rest there,

our limbs spread beneath the meaningless sky,

find the scent of the lover

and mate wildly. If this is paradise

and all we have to do is be born and live

and die, why pick up the stick at all?

Why see the wheel in the rock?

Why bring back from the burning fields

a bowl full of fire and pretend that it’s magic?

What Could Happen

Noon. A stale Saturday. The hills

rise above the town, nudge houses and shops

toward the valley, kick the shallow river

into place. Here, a dog can bark for days

and no one will care enough

to toss an empty can or an unread newspaper

in his direction. No one complains.

The men stand in loose knots

outside Ace Hardware, talk a little, stare

at the blue tools. A few kids

sulk through the park, the sandbox full

of hardscrabble, the monkey bars

too hot to touch. In a town like this

a woman on the edge of forty

could drive around in her old car, the back end

all jingle and rivet, one headlight

taped in place, the hood held down with greasy rope,

and no one would notice.

She could drive up and down the same street

all day, eating persimmons,

stopping only for a moment to wonder

at the wooden Indian on the corner of 6th and B,

the shop window behind it

filled with beaten leather, bright woven goods

from Guatemala, postcards of this town

before it began to go under, began

to fade into a likeness of itself.

She could pull in at the corner store for a soda

and pause before uncapping it,

press the cold glass against her cheek,

roll it under her palm down the length of her neck

then slip it beneath the V of her blouse

and let it rest there, where she’s hottest.

She could get back in her car

and turn the key, bring the engine up

like a swarm of bottle flies, feel it

shake like an empty caboose.

She could twist the radio too high

and drive like this for the rest of the day —

the same street, the same hairpin turn

that knocks the jack in the trunk from one wheel well

to the other — or she could pass the turn

and keep going, the cold soda

wedged between her legs, the bass notes

throbbing like a vein, out past the closed shops

and squat houses, the church

with its bland white arch, toward the hills,

beyond that shadowy nest of red madrones.

After Twelve Days of Rain

I couldn’t name it, the sweet

sadness welling up in me for weeks.

So I cleaned, found myself standing

in a room with a rag in my hand,

the birds calling time-to-go, time-to-go.

And like an old woman near the end

of her life I could hear it, the voice