Certain we’d never find each other
I crouched on a grassy knoll
peered down at steady traffic
This happened before branding
before cell phones & remix
before shuffling sampling
When I lost my lover in Kansas City—
The week Maddy died of cancer
and I didn’t get to say goodbye
The week of Katrina
catastrophe in the Lower Ninth Ward—
two cars traveling from Colorado to Massachusetts
Let’s say she was fixed on losing me
but I only felt great apprehension
More anxious than when I took
my daughter & her cousin to the circus
in Madison Square Garden
Manhattan the sleazy 70s
Exiting at Times Square
seven year old Jonathan
needed to pee right then
Subway station bathroom
I held my daughter scissored to my legs
Stood guard arms crossed
in front of the open stall
It was rush hour when we separated
Actually it was terrifying
And she had our dog!
My parents were born in the Pale
A century later I’ve surpassed them
as American children are expected to do
living beyond the pale
It’s been a gradual process
like the sea taking back the land
I mistook her gray car for a dozen others
The light was all wrong & the sound
let’s say the sound was crazy
let’s say louder than it had ever been
We’d left apricot trees flourishing in scrub
flash floods in the arroyo emus & forsaken llamas
street horses munched fruit from overhanging limbs
dancing sandhill cranes in the Bosqué
a polyphemous moth brushed my hand
Beyond the Continental Divide
I understood she wanted to stay with bison & mule deer
My heart beating in my mouth
During mummification
skilled embalmers would discard the brain
and return the heart to the body
I felt myself drying up
When we lost each other in Kansas City—
A week after the Battle of Haditha
Another week of suicide bombings in Baghdad—
two cars traveling west to east
Behind the knoll a once forested expanse
the wood sundered slash piled five stories high
Maybe it was the outskirts of St. Louis where I lost her
Funny that I don’t remember
how we finally found each other
She must’ve seen me pulled over
The rest of the drive without incident
except a cop flagging me down for speeding
jack-knifed semi by a truck stop
We lived in New England for two years
Our house had wainscotting a screened porch
and then
she headed back to Colorado
La Plata mountains
high desert
open spaces