Wherever You Lay Your Head

Rising Smoke

One obeys nature and thinks of the rest of the journey
in straw sandals and paper hat. The leaves larger
and the light longer. I could do it in my sleep,
my head a roadway peppered with mountain passes.

My brother disappears with his lights on,
my mother, at eighty, travels between
the heavy rains of the four seasons.
What I imagine happens sets not one inn in place,

nor puts our dead father to rest. The air is chilly,
despite a feast and a fire. I’m the one to say it
about myself, I feel like a servant wading across,
relieved of possessions.

It doesn’t hurt to write, it’s as difficult as learning
to read a glance. The head of a fawn? Shark teeth?
A dream is snatched from me, then emptiness,
its carved door broken into.

An afternoon of one glimpse of a narrow bay.
A guardhouse stands at the end
of a bridge. Sweep of lute strings.
This is the spot grown children abandoned

their aging mothers,
a young man kissed his love good-bye on the forehead,
a young woman returned without composing a single line
an old woman not in her own bed.