All year the shadows and lesser permissions. America

had been weeping disagreement and fragments

of caution. No one had a place to go but unstrung

cities kept our attention. I had to get out to the disorderly

where bats ache to purple. To the minor rebellion

of rigid aspens and direction unruly for miles. Sunlight

pushed by bluff. Turn a wheel toward the wild heart

of geography. The sky had its pulses, its glowering

and bears. I drove a map many miles. It was late summer,

each day a crimson reappearance of earth. The road moved

its horses. Nothing else but loitering ditches and ruts,

ranges of water. A mountain switched to its reflection.

It was easy to be greedy to situate where a great

horned owl could trace everything from the branches:

joy or pain. I had traveled to the end and was left

with the taste of an end, the start of the dark, which was also

a celebration of truth and new beginning.