Town is not the same.
There are yellowbells and sunlight and people I can't,
though they live in town, call townspeople.
Nothing needs scouring so rushes are left alone
and the brewery only does business with travelers.
These people look like boiled eggs perfect in their cups,
ski lifts which are bright against the hot sky like clean dishes.
I couldn't find a bar.
Your shadow in the hotel looked like Fred Astaire.
I looked away.
Because I needed a poem I imagined
driving through with a dying aunt but all our meals tasted like water too cold for the flume
and in a town that's always afternoon it's hard to admit you're afraid of being alone in the ground.
And it isn't the same. Next to deglassia
I couldn't remember loving words,
looked at the page and this was the next one, wide
because there were no margins
because I stopped imagining them.
For no good reason
you are crouching in the needles.
I didn't want Judy to die but I hoped those towns I walked with you would.
Or I would. And then write others.
It's been years in all places and I've been good near and far myself,
made gentle poems and neighbors, dug biscuit root
and just a moment ago I was nothing on a clean steel bridge,
sun extinguished a match lit in the larches far below
but now I must be remembering everything wrong.
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