Relocation
This is drought—slur
of days, days, days.
wanting like the hallowed
riverbed wants, like the blinded eye
wants, like the empty womb
for moss to grow up and over,
and inside
to settle in the earth, for soil
beneath the stone to wear
grassless and blitzed
with night crawlers.
to be cool, stationary, filled.
The city names on maps are hooks for the soft lip.
Mine were pursed for the taking.
Then, this place: sunlight strained
through leaves of Japanese maples.
Houses like scrimshaw, carved
and ancient. The language
phonetically mangled, something
the dog drug home, and the dog is me.
Am I kudzu or land the kudzu took?
The land: reduced to the strange swellings
of acres of mummified trees.
The kudzu: burnt to root yet returning,
ravenous to cover, to take.
Returning
I dig shingles from the mud,
they cling like they belong,
slate embedded in the field behind
the place you still call home.
The workers and I pile them,
dump them in bags.
We can never restore
the order. I cannot believe
that this was the place you hung
your green sweaters, striped
t-shirts, or, on the busy days,
threw them on the floor,
a floor now covered
with the innards of ceiling,
the gauzy pinks of insulation
chalk and red of brick and gypsum lath.
Split trees, bedspreads
on the high boughs and backpacks on roofs
of the nearby houses—
A lesson in how things can get out of hand
how you can lose as you have
lost, or not lose, as I have never lost
anything I did not want to give.