Desire


Some change of body or some change of mind
Has cleared the world
I found
This morning, dried
Like an old sheet hung out in the sun.

I found a scorched past
Cooled of its smoke and spent.
The air tasted of it, but refreshed
And filtering;
Above, beyond the field fallen to char,

The necessary world was still alive.
The cracked and scattered woods
Wore fuel
Gathered from years of standing in the sun,
Rooted in tight channels of dirt;

To one side, almost leveled for new growth,
The junk was blackened back to element,
Though here and there, a magazine or tire
Smoldered
Flickering back toward value, to be lost.

Whatever the old life had been
Was a stain lifted on the oil of my thumb.
The day
Was stripped of squandered purposes,
And the gloss of vision buckled to what was there.

So I toured
This new, unwanted ground
Animals scavenged on,
Which soured with depletion and exhaust
Whenever the wind changed.

What I had survived
I saw a little of, but nothing more
Than a broken heel, the fragment of a glass,
The dirty water
Screwed to a drain.

The lost heat
Had withered me alive and made me lean,
As though I had, stripped naked in this field,
Been blistered to coarse essence
Until there was no defense or need of such.

My brain was in my skin.
Then over the damp ash
Moving air
Crossed the uneven stakes of abandoned plots,
Unraveling scraps of twine; and the wind

Ranged out and sifted through
The wide-open expanse of blackened grass
And wreck of motives,
Uncovering
What could not be consumed

To a day
All residue and freshness,
As if fire
Burned appetite away
And left desire.