This is a suburban dream;
Painted in dripping sun,
Like a thick yellow miracle.
Our valley is quiet,
Perhaps even shy;
Or some would say reserved because
When you crack her open, her secrets pour out.
Mostly treasures, like the
Thick, loping clouds that fill our
Soaring, muted skies, our
Temerous hearts, with whirling flights of fancy.
Against her heart cling wet
Miracles like morning sunshine,
Clean and sweet from the wash.
Aged film colors, sepia and peach
Grace our eaves, warm our quiet streets.
From here you look out, and you
Cannot see. The horizon is a dense
Fortress of purple and black creases
Inviting you to look beyond, but forbidding
Your heart from hopeless wandering,
And endless wondering.
A flat horizon begs
The heart where the eyes cannot drift, dulled
By the congruity of land and sky,
Infinite in losses and joy because
These thoughts are trapped in places,
In valley floors, with cold, inverted pollution,
In buildings where you made love and laughed,
And stared at strong backs
With seeping, aching want.
With no containing walls, like a deluge I feel
The world rush and roar, the past is so cradled
In these valley mothers, in their curling palms.
The Shenandoah hills in one hand,
Towering Rockies in another;
Separated by six hours in a metal tube, gazing over
Perfect geometric figures in the awful, garish cornucopia colors of a
Holiday Inn carpet.
Separated in time, in space,
In my heart not coincident;
Separate as their horizons, which never fuse,
Graced by ancient light, by a fickle heavenly muse.
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