Don’t Panic In Albuquerque
Don’t panic at what the rock is made of,
Just hike it, blissed out, nieve, rosy.
The sonic boom in your ears
Is a massage of locusts, cicadas.
One hits you in the chest. Those are dense
Little buggers, he says,
Feet trailing sideways in the dust
Ahead of you, always you never
Know where you are in the desert;
Find your way by pinpricks, by towers,
By the rock shaped most
like a camel, or a ship’s mast.
Porcupine you. How stupid. Falling
In love, falling in grace, are you falling
Closer to your true age? 38.
Say it, 38. A dream of dreams curtailed
You cold, cold-clocked you in
Those alleys you made yourself,
Raised yourself in, out of, like a new citizen
Or an old one of some second-rate country.
States shift. They enable. You
Can’t even remember the way mold grew
Over everything in Oregon, how your car
Would carry lichen, how your hippie neighbor
Would swing her ax into the new seasoned
Wood from New Seasons. You don’t even
Recall the way you smelled of plywood;
How your thighs filled out that fall
From eating warm eggs twice a day.
Now a thin Pilsner, relax. Meet a man
Named Darryl. Wait for your love
To tame his guitars alone in his salt box.
Let this city have you.
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