by
Kurt Brown
These fields belong to locusts—
not every seven years,
but every year. They cry out
in shrill voices,
and at night people
sleep in Childress or Clayton
or Goodnight, Texas.
I drive south from Denver
through a country of adobe houses
resting on sand like gutted boats.
At dawn, the crying pipes down.
By 8, oil derricks nod,
probe the outskirts of busted towns.
Through the Panhandle, cities thicken—
“Dan’s Barbecue and Steaks...” “The Last
Corral...”
How will
you fit into this calcified earth,
this cowboy’s dream of Heaven?
*
I won’t pretend we were close.
I’m half astonished
that we’ve found each other
even now
on this cracked prairie near Fort Worth.
What a place to die.
Was it shame or fear
that bred our secrets, then hushed us
like that bead of spittle
soldering the lips of the newly dead?
Aren’t you the point I once departed,
the blue wastage of my course?
*
You phoned once
from somewhere past Gibraltar, somewhere
in the heart of the Atlantic,
your voice scratchy and small
surrounded by a vast silence.
Your
body floats, then fractures: legs first,
then the eyes, torn by diabetes,
absent limbs contrived of plastic
to make you look good—one last time —
in a blue suit.
*
Look, I’ve come this far to say hello.
It’s noon. The sun rings off my hood
like a struck bell.
Somewhere your body waits,
almost virginal, whole.
Now the city hovers in the distance.
The land swelters,
scarred with wheelruts of old journeys.
Pray for me, my father, too.
We are far from home.