The news today, dividing our property according to the ascendancy of our deeply held myths. Everything that happens in a day is like the clanging of church bells, the lumbering trucks clogging city streets, the shouts and noise and sonic chaos, and a weariness that says, die innocent. Ashamed to ask for what you desperately want. What is wealth if not the absence of want?

She was a young woman, dedicated to the great and remorseless enterprise of simply being herself. He asked her to fill the emptiness that haunted him in polite conversation. She said, there are no ladders to my window.

the homecoming waltz of silence and song
of speech and touch
of humor and sorrow
turning slowly in the empty gymnasium
beneath the ghosts of streamers and confetti

fallen hours, the years a shipwreck
crying out like wounded birds
melodies like worn out pastures
horses grazing on major thirds