Plato

                                                  in his tree

Once I walked
through a forest.
It was high
in the mountains.
The air was clear and thin.
The stars shone brightly,
the outline of the forest canopy in sharp relief
like the background
to a stop-motion silhouette fairy tale.

Would shy cereus or sugar glider,
swing-shift foreman or taxi driver,
call the day better
than the night?

Or say the moon
has only one side,
that which we can see?

Is a dollar worth more
face up in a palm
and less face down?

Who would wish for only
a right hand?
Does anyone still call the left
sinister?

Forgotten, shabby and long time abandoned
          in stubbled fur, with broken
teeth like toggles, the old gods are leaving.

At home now the first grey 
in the hollows, morning in 
the grass, in the brick 

are any houses. That’s for sure. And as for
cars, trucks, tractors, trailers, motorcycles,
you’re in another universe, friend. At most

The high-pressure system followed us
from our apartment and out to where
the houses, scattered on the hills and set apart,

The sun goes, So long, so long, see you around.
And zone by zone by zone across America
the all-night coast-to-coast ghost café lights up.

Good old Paul—when he might have been kind
to a kid he, made a pass instead.

Well literally zillions of passes

Like bulls trotting on their solemn rounds
over the cow flops, daisies, clover,
checking out the maidens of the meadow,