the circumstances were. Somewhere it is written.

All the good fat land needs is use and respect.

Imagine the discreet pull of something

summoning us to impasse, forever in motion,

trembling across the guardrail at Niagara.

Our personal lives are bombarded with fiction.

Some say “wow,” soaking it into psyche.

Perhaps it is remaining as half-life, perhaps

art will mediate a formal discipline

so that we may cast off too much “experience.”

I, too, am working on the verge of new directions.

There are, of course, limitations upon the land.

Soon it will be nude November with falling leaves.

Soon ol’ mates from Zion will salute my memory.

Soon I’ll have a regular job.

Giving voice to so many Americas,

navigating a forest of wisteria and crepe-myrtle

in search of true-vine literature, Very well,

I may say, summoning a willing maiden,

calling home to Mama, calling out to Sasha.

Whispers of earthly delight, some incorrect.

What place does sanity have in place, really?

A sprinkling of rain may slow the destruction

of tomorrow, may even save the Opera House

and the households of those in prayer.

Yet there are several endings.

The newsprint of morning is bursting with rage.

We are all anointed with different creamy salve,

living different stories, telling them differently

in the firefight of man’s bumble-bee demise.

This side of Chicago

our heads are rather drunk with imperfection,

on the Gulf a Palace of Smoke Light transforms

from the ordinary into communal magic.

Awake and have a cup of green tea.

Different kinds of exorcism

but above all things a sequence.

Contemplate what lies behind and before us.

Address the love-starved pine porches

of a dilapidated nation in descent.

The prettiest rainbow

hovering over Star City and the horses

stamping impatient and rowdy hometown tenants

pushing and shoving, breathing hard,

demanding things in their places.

Errol Miller

______________________
©Errol Miller, 1999. Errol Miller’s “In the Twilight of a Cooler Autumn” appeared in Vol. 3, No. 2.

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