Sometimes love’s vagrancy (whatever you call it) 
overwhelms all but the most robust subscribers, 
and, dishonest as it may sound, the whole cramped enterprise 

cotton sweaters with the American flag, Oxford shirts, and riding boots.

But no wind and I, under the constant chaos of that dark,
hung on the ledge of my love like a dragonfly.

I came to Alabama for the dreams

   of Sun Ra, who said he was born on another

impossible, uninhabitable bottom land and unreconstructed

I went down to Missolonihgi
with my oldest friend—this was a long time ago—
and we visited Byron’s house,

It began with the deer, dead in the water 
Just off my parents’ dock, 
And then there was a procession of horses,

As in the plays, the body was decor,
Fit embellishment to a scene
Where chance's misrule seemed to have gone as planned:

Yes, I want someone to know me well,
better than the foreman at Ford Electra
knows the chips

The troubled entrepreneurs of evening—
the palm-readers, the Mexican bracelet salesmen,
the girl who dances on a sheet of tin—

On the pale morning I left town
I was thinking about women,
and later, in the Rockies where work was scarce,