The Published Poem

My brothers have seen the poem,
though I'm not sure I'd show it to my father or mother, were they alive.
Some people think the dead know everything we do,
and that they actually care.
Mike just shook his head, laughed when I showed him the poem,
a bittersweet laugh acquired with time;
my other brothers, too young to remember the old man not sober,
read the poem like its about a stranger or some fictional character.
I've found that the death of parents, no matter their age or yours,
bequeaths a strange kind of freedom to a son or daughter,
more like the lengthening of a leash than being let loose to run,
but a freedom, nonetheless, to speak out loud.
So yeah, maybe I would show this poem to my old man,
though I know that , as usual he wouldn't have much to say.
I know he wouldn't deny the poem, you can't take back your deeds
any more than you can take back your words.
Good for you, son. I know he'd say that.

Peat Fire

Years of accumulated rage or fear or sorrow
you thought safely buried, converted to fertile soil,
can smolder underground for years,
burn like a peat fire thought extinguished,
dressed in flowering dogwood and jewel weed,
undetectable behind eyes calm as summer sky.
Then suddenly a smoke wraith appears,
a small flame licks a stand of dry cat tails,
a twig, a half-rotted log,
and soon the whole swamp erupts.
All the beautiful animals inside you panic,
frogs seek moist mud to bury themselves
in vain during this drought,
turtles cook inside their shells,
thrush and vireo nests turn to ash in seconds,
eggs fry in the heat.
You pray for a three-day soaker
before the fire spreads
to the houses of those who live near you.
You bring in all the fire suppression you can muster,
helicopter drops of clenched fists and teeth,
ceaseless pacing and praying;
you try to douse the fire with drink
though you know alcohol is fuel for fire;
you set backfires with cigarettes and weed,
and after awhile the fire seems extinguished,
but the old folks will tell you
the fire has only retreated below ground again
where hot spots can smolder even under a blanket of snow.

Night Driving--The Great Plains

You can see the lights of Trinidad and La Junta
spread out across the prairie,
resembling the twinkling cluster of the Pleiades
from fifty miles (or maybe, light years) distant.
You drive and drive, seventy-five, eighty miles an hour,
but the highway is a treadmill in this darkness,
until suddenly, there you are,
driving through a one-story town
that seems like a miniature village
asleep beside the tracks of a model railroad,
but there are no people walking its streets
or waving to trains rumbling through their dreams.
Towns like Cheyenne Wells or Sharon Springs,
even smaller places, with giant grain elevators
towering over empty rails cars,
look like paper pop-up towns
nestled in the pages of children's books,
facades for lives lived between the lines
of stories I'm passing through too fast to read.
These little towns seem like destinations at two a.m.;
but you're through them before you know it,
surrounded again by the black void.
Red circles beside red lines on a map, these lights in the night,
make you think of the end of your life as you approach them.
You've heard that when you die,
you see another light in the distance,
so you press down on the accelerator,
fiddle with the radio, searching for a voice in the static
to let you know you're not alone,
that you are, indeed, going someplace.