When I track the narrow paths which hide behind fences
where elder and trolleys and abandoned bins live
I know that this is cusp, this is a finding of a way for life
to rise from old potato peelings and discarded toys which gather there,
anticipate their transformation into something more,
but never quite catch the moment, though sometimes I glimpse
the heaving of a sigh beneath their own broken weight.
If a stag were to lose himself here he would turn golden,
summon me, and I would follow until he and I were one,
the hunter and the prey, follow where there are no fixed paths
through death, through grief. I reminded my father of a time
a stag bounded in front of his car at dusk, but he wasn’t sure
if that had been my dream or if it had belonged to him.
BURNING HOUSE PRESS 