Night Walk with Strings

Cause what is simple in the moonlight by the morning never is.
~Conor Oberst, “Lua”

A bare cornfield in Illinois takes your footprints.
Walking toward the unlit woods, seeds
fall in with the family of names you drop. Only a radio
tower’s three red lights witness your strange fruit.
Say one name three times and be surprised
when the train woos. Don’t ask why.

Just walk stinging to the edge of the field. Run
for heat. It takes what seems a long time. Think eyes.
The grassy edge drops low. The woods are only a string
of trees along a road. A sprawling tree creaks.
Straddle a white fallen log. Call ahhhh.
Call and call until the moon shines sharp wind.

No mountains, you don’t know which direction
you face. Relative to what. The direction is want.
For long moments, there are no names.
Tall waving weeds are not people walking
or weeds. You are not a person but a wind,
low sky, cold and creak. No one knows.

When you are done with nothing, a fox
doesn’t run by. Visit the soft moon through
the talking tree. Think of sitting in tall grass,
of what this might do to you. Don’t sit.
Climb back up to the field and walk with the wind
behind. Moving toward light goes faster.

Think better of doing magic for what you want.
Don’t plant the clean orange panties you found
tangled in the fray of your clean orange scarf
when you first stepped out the door, tired of walls
and warmth. Nothing will grow from them
in this field under the moon. One never knows

which you is casting the spell. Better to let
the huge field walk across you. Fallow. Love’s pale
stalks and cobs plowed under. Crunch with cold.
Bite with wind. Spread rich space over earth. Wait.
Gloveless, pull out a pocket-sized notebook and write
careless rows in the light of a nearby neighborhood.

Nearer and nearer your mother’s home, notice
your scarf soaked with breath. Touch your water.
Sing your song of want. Dance drunk with cold,
clumsy with clods. Sink into crusted, soft furrows.
Find the old wagon wheel leaning on the oak
where you first left the manicured yards.

Trespass, breach the stand of grabby trees
where Shadow’s name is engraved on a river
rock. Pay respect to every dog you’ve ever lost.
Hold on to your hat. Walk the paved road back
to the house with burning thighs, a fist of panties
in your pocket, smelling of Christmas night.

2012