The street is a bone
we flesh along.
Timid ones,
ever asking.
Why do things
suckle us so well?
Nourished by evening
spill the new day.
By the birdbath
she was waiting,
things happen,
happen that way.
Look at the street sign,
guess at the truth—
she will lead you home
in her own sweet time
but will she let you go?
The story folds around you,
that is what they do.
You do right to be afraid,
or cautious at least
like sunrise in the treetops.

2.
Are we there yet is like
the always song.
Cars are not equipped
with answers, chariots
at least had horses and you know
they have heads to toss
and yea and neigh.
forgive the pun. The pain
of not knowing
where going
goes and why
and when. And then.

3.
She gave so much
we couldn’t leave.
Story of the earth,
Fomenko chronology,
we just got here,
Jesus had seen Abraham,
Babylon is yesterday
and Rome tomorrow
almost, almost are we now,
shepherdless sheep,
green as goslings, we
turn out after all to be
just one more kind of animal.

4.
So zoo me.
Say on my sign
he thinks he sings
and lives the sky.
Bless me, this zoo
has no cages,
the walls are made of roads,
they feed us day
and give us night to drink
and we linger,
restless sleepers
on the brink of knowing.

5.
In this religion
there is a place
called Somewhere Else,
some manage to go there,
plane or train, coracle, ox,
and never come back.
Some come back with pictures,
leafy descriptions of that place,
tattoos they got there,
recipes for cassoulets,
all the fraudulent evidences
of our senses five
arrayed against the silent
beauty of our mind.

6.
I am the first to admit
to my timidity.
Caution cushions fate—
fact. Girl with prayer book,
boy with roadmap
stumbling through the dark—
we need light to read by
but how to come by it?
I tremble quietly and look away.
Anything can be taken away—
that is the rule of the place
and we learn it as our mother tongue.
Or is there a language with no past tense?

                                                10 August 2020