Benløs, Seven Years On

The great desert willow is gone,

A spindly sapling in its place,

And Sunshine House now’s painted grey.

They weren’t great essays, anyway.

They conflated too many things,

Sketchy historical details

Of a strange Viking chieftain-king

Who maybe had a bone disease,

Plus whatever was happening

In the moment, on the commute,

Around these desert towns that spring.

Sometimes you want to claim yourself,

And sometimes you want to escape,

And sometimes you try both at once

And fail both ways. To imagine

Being the serpent in that tree,

A boneless invading Viking

Carried to battles on a shield,

And a hermit in the desert

Who drove a long commute to work,

All of these things, and all at once,

And to try to make phrases dance

While pronouncing reasonably

Rare dreams . . . The great willow turned brown.

Maybe the irrigation stopped.

The egg-yellow house was bought out.

The king left no bones in the ground.