Loaf of bread or sheep's
head, rubber nubbed
for traction on flatnesses

In the midst of winter, where moonlight carves
stillness into the shape of hills, there is
a cabin feeding smoke to the low-hanging sky,

              I had a way with dirt, loved
—flying over Tucson, Albuquerque, Boulder—
              to see it mounded, shrugged

Alders, their roots’ snarl in marshy soil.
Furtive roads, all summer dust, past
still ponds—a miniature vista

Where they sell greeting cards for jail
and use cops to keep us in
who’ve already been “in,” where we write:

              A worm
inside this one, he says.

Books say parents
didn’t mourn their children

Once again I’m caught assuming
human privilege, as if only our parts merit names.
We are mere givers of names.

The first word I loved was crepusculo.
How long it took, one u mimicking the other,
volleyed in the syllables’ canyon.

It is hard to explain the light here,
earnest and aerobic light,
not the complacent kind.