ISSUE: Winter 2004
Where will you go,
little vagabond,
anonymous familiar,
my hardly mine
there is no mine
without?
What will you do
there on that
blindingly bright
or pitch black
shorelessness,
stripped naked, witless,
down to the un-
ironic spark
of what within me
wouldn’t get
what’s funny when
the Buddhist monk
who orders
a hot dog says,
Hey, buddy, could
you make me one
with everything?
Even thin smoke—
hovering
a moment over
burning leaves—
as it disperses
bears in its vague
and vaguer
curls and rings
the curled or crumbling
leaf shapes that
released it, as if
remembering them,
or trying to—
but you, my restless
tramp, my rude,
ungrateful houseguest,
as you drift away
unfettered, wakeless,
lost
as snow in snow,
will you bear any
trace at all
of who it was
who let you go?
