All the Housesof the Past Have Burnt Down

for Travis

1.

last week &almost twenty years ago

we drove up thecoast

a feelingsomewhere between the world opening up

and a grey sky—

            thereis grey in the road

            thatis the grey of time

the feeling isthat we are outside of time

while beingcompletely within it:

is the memory ofa place the same as the place itself?

2.

Dear Travis,

Everything iscloser together it seems. Sometimes rainy, sometimes just grey, a grey we’renot used to these days while we live in the desert.

3.

there is lookingback & looking forward

but I like tothink we can look at time from all directions

walking aroundthe shell of the house

I pointed outwhere the dining room was,

where I sat oneThanksgiving, then the staircase

& the roomsabove.

what is leftstill smells like ash.

it is cold butholds fire.

that person—thatvulnerability—

was life goingto be something else

or was it alwaysgoing to be just like this—

4.

The town waseverything and nothing like I remembered. Sleepy, nostalgic salt air. To behonest, it felt depressed, depressing. We arrived in the dark and walked, sleptlistening to the water. Had breakfast, stopped into a store and talked tosomeone who knew D. & S. when they lived here.

5.

I don’t know where“I” begins and ends.

I don’t know howto answer your questions.

Who I was andwho I am is the same.

The center ofthe universe

must beeverywhere at once.

The windows areall gone.

There is nothingleft dividing inside from outside.

White-ThroatedSwifts at Cliff Palace

in evening asthe light shifts

swifts angle in& swoosh

            intothe crevice & disappear up

they disappearinto rock

they disappearinto centuries

                                    dothey into smoke

                                    dothey into layers

of soot &time

on the ceiling ofrock

 Weather 

               It’s been snowing for two days

we’ve got a couple feet.

               All the corpses in coffins

unburied, waiting to rot.

               It’s been raining here, so muddy

I can’t get my van out of the driveway.

               We have a way of keeping

               spirits from leaving their bodies.

               Not as much snow here on the coast,

freezing rain, sheets of ice.

                               At the cemetery,

                               Birds arrive.