Exile Status

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All my life I’ve been a stupid little runaway

          & tried therefore to like philosophy

                     as beauty pageants

really wouldn’t work

          though smoking yes & beer & sex

                     a speck I guess.

But dipping tobacco no

          & pink trucks sorry no

                     & no football either

or deer assassination or coons up trees

          or weekends gutting pigs

                     & geese. Which is why

I tried with ideas to escape myself

           like ideas are Black Eyed Susans

                     or mice. But ideas

are not the Mason jars & homemade jams

          of the Apocalypse

                     & ideas are not

the shredded roosters & sourdough starters

          of the Apocalypse, & knowing that means

                     I’m just an old farmer

milking my cow in the dusk. Or an itinerant granny

          holed up a wily ridge.

                     Or a sleepy child

wheeling her little wagon

          down a sleepy road.

                     & dusk really is

the main thrill of it as in the point of it

          & also the fear of it

                     & thus nothing like an idea

though it’s duende yes of course

          & what we call the liminal

                     since there are bats here too

not to mention

          my beloved foxes curled up in a feral posse

                     like a party of furs

& the old & famous

          hard rain out there

                     just drenching us.