Pine Overcoat

Come in. You’re welcome. There’s room
In the ruin this morning.

Topics for your yawning thoughts—
When’s the mountain quieter?

When birds sing or when they don’t?
What do you do with beauty?

Pinkblue, baby-bassinet
Sky like a gender-reveal

Of a future—transgender,
Transhuman, trans everything.

Dawn. Climbing out of Veyo
On this Sunday of loosened

Restrictions, heading upland
Into the high, ranch country—

Greasewood, juniper-piñon,
Wavering lines of barbed wire—

Desert Mound, somewhere open
And empty, accessible

To a crooked, little man
In a battered, compact car—

Meadowlarks on the fence posts,
Berries on the junipers,

Damp, sandy ground in the shade.
Been there? Sounds sweet doesn’t it?

It is. Smells sweet, too—musky
Scent of dirt exhaling spring.

Down in valleys and canyons,
Humans everywhere again,

Hoping this plague’s near its end.
This is just the beginning,

Just more of the beginning,
More of beginning again.

The real ruin is coming,
Will come later for us all.

But let’s not talk about that,
Now. I’ve got grundles of good

Books to guddle around in,
And hours to waste on being.

This actual day began
With a glow some time ago,

But now the peaks are dipping
Their summits down into dawn,

Getting shoulders under it,
And it’s sunrise for real, time

To get off the rutted road,
To plan for afternoon shade.

Solitude is the best cure
For loneliness, according

To Miss Marianne Moore, but
It’s also an incitement

To faux philosophizing.
Here—Have we reached the highest

Watermark for human waves?
The extent of our outbreak?

New houses keep on rising
Behind the newest houses.

Plenty more slums could follow.
Alone with a mountain breeze,

A lark, a fly, and someone’s
Far off target-practice pops

That sound like occasional
Falling rocks, it’s too easy

To feel thoughtfully lofty—
Better, though, than daydreaming.

The easier one has it,
The more prone to fantasies.

Body outside, the mind turns
To play with its inner hoard

Of picture postcards, costume
Jewelry, and memories.

It’s maddening fantasies
Refuse to cease disturbing

The peace of the open hour.
Fantasies, philosophies—

Let’s see if we can push them
Into the mental distance

With ruin and extinction.
For now we are ennobled

By sitting under this tree,
Enfeoffed with vast scenery.

Possession. Nobility.
Entitlement. Permission.

We’ve none of these, actually.
But you can come sit with me,

And I’ll point out Brian Head,
Still snow-covered, to the east,

And a red-tailed hawk circling,
As if I owned these free things,

As if I owned anything.
Possession. Nobility.

We have what others give us,
Let us have, don’t take from us.

It’s a damn good thing that Qin
And all the rest of the kings,

Despite their efforts, never
Cornered immortality—

They’d dole it out to favorites,
Make it titled property,

Walls and barbed wire lining it.
They should have been more careful

About what they wished to miss.
Resistance piques Death’s interest.

Send your woodsmen out in time.
Put aside your alchemists.

Today you have rose twilights
And these windy silences—

Tomorrow you get the cave
And silence of never was.

I wish I had my own ax
And half-knew how to use it,

And maybe you could help me,
On this Sunday in the trees,

Cut down the last and only
Overcoat I’ll ever need.