In a Country

And when the rains came 
   like lean wolves 

we were ready. The statues strew with purpose, 

half-buried in myth, in the fecund already 

filling with color 
like the last practice of a dance 

that stretched like honeysuckle 
on the border of a marble quarry, 

where a girl, enslaved, leaned to test the taste 
& imagined her name imprinted 

on the road to the temple at Delphi, 
so that there was no doubt, not ever, 

of her freedom. 

 ~ 

Her name in an earth screaming 
   debt & torches & sharks. 

 ~ 

North— 

A thousand horses pull through the dream of a little land 
& I must feed them 

   more 

than stories & touch. 

~ 


Ghosts, not flags 
   on the stars. 

 ~ 

It is beginning to snow in the mind  

& I am still in the car, that 100,000 miles of dream, 

returning to where I’ve woken, 
   gift after gift, 

thankful & bruised 

as the faint music of the past opens 
   like a snarl— 

the clarity of nests abandoned by winter, the apartment, the cathedrals of youth, 

where swallows in the last feed ate the sky 
   of foreign cities 

as I protected the mind 
   with youthful answers. 

 ~ 

The yard is a half-finished altar, 
   a rat’s nest of tears. 

 ~ 

Carved into the ether, the day 
I was gifted the knife. 

 ~ 

Bombs & the muffled screams of the dead. 

 ~ 

There is no land, no palace 
   or money for rent. 

To hold onto these dreams—horses at the trough, 

   consuming the fire in gulps. 

My daughter at the door, in a bright-purple coat, 

tying her boots 
as I start up the car. 

 ~ 

I am here & also 
sitting in a fortress 

by the sea. 

I am here in the dream of the land, in the sky I was given 

& give to my daughter 
in paused moments of warmth— 

~ 


Also this… 

 ~ 

A kite lost in the grave-clouds, 
   & her birthday next week. 

~ 


Also this… 

 ~ 

The snows never came back 
   to hide us. Wolves in the labyrinth, guarded by guards 

that shoot down any leaving 
   from their posts. 

 ~ 

And the betta fish, the swaying tail we buried in ceremony, in a handkerchief, 

as we decided an afterlife, a heaven in miniature, a now, 

where her fish & grandfather 
   are never alone 

& I imagine, alone, the part of story where she can visit the soil in the future, 

because we own the land 

& the handkerchief we folded 

disappears 

when she shows her first love this place. 

~ 


Dad, we must be going somewhere… 

 ~ 

In a country I’ve built another country, a home, 
   though its mostly a poem, a story 

before bed— 

there is good water to drink 
   & horses, 

wolves & dangers
 
in the ways we can explain 
   & prepare for. 

The road to this country is a thread. 

A benevolent fire. 

~ 


Dad… 

~ 


I don’t know where we’re going… 

Imagine it with me. 

Step in. Let us in.