Moving is always the same way:
the mist that would be snow
in some other skyline
or month, the boxes on their next

circuit without you as they lean
against the dumpster. Here
in the east you find words
more or less as you supposed they

might be, r's hung from the end of
every idea, the h
in human gone missing,
leapt mute from the train in Kansas,

maybe, before you rode it on
past the glad child bums,
their small belongings bent
to their frames like appendages,

past men straightening their shirt-cuffs
in café doorways, framed
in the stripes of their own
suits, toward the point where everything

meets nothing, your motion denied,
and you arrive, finally,
on the sandy trims of
the continent. Sift carefully

traveler, before you sink down,
buried in what you came
for. Some have come forward
and lost those behind, men have been

shot in the back for refusing
to turn around. Just stand
here a moment before
you move on. Know that you can push

in that way as long as you like,
you can follow this beach
even under the ocean, crawl
up with it on the other side,

but it will never welcome you
further than its first mat
of grasses, it will shake
you from its back like a wet dog.

Volume 2, Issue 1, 2007