Fate

The wheel waits, propped while it rusts,
Metal too ruined for scrap
By now, one would think. What next?

It leans against the railing.
Someone will get rid of it,
Sooner or later, won’t they?

What if it’s just left to rust
Indefinitely, useless
But outlasting the era,

The generations, maybe
Even the species? Future
Pasts are all around these cliffs,

Future arches eroding,
Future hoodoos emerging.
Maybe the wheel will sit here,

Future relic of deep past,
Fragile by then, ochre lace
Circle on columnar sands.

Getaway

The kitchen of the three-day

Rental is quiet, almost

Silent, except when the fridge

Compressor comes on. Cattle

In the corral outside low,

Every rare once in a while.

These days there’s a narrow band

Between standardized tourist

Infrastructure and despair

In remote towns where no one

Rents at all, since who would come?

This place is near scenic trails,

Near enough to snag a few

Travelers not too fussy,

Not paying that much either,

But far enough the scruffy

Motel’s still locally owned,

And there’s not one budget chain.

The old ranch house is trying hard

To be charming, to present

As a quaint country cottage.

There’s a flowery Welcome

Sign hanging in the kitchen,

Flowery pillows and shams.

There’s a guestbook that explains,

Settler ranchers built the house

And ran a successful herd

Until they lost it. They turned

It into a boarding house

During the Great Depression

To survive, says the guestbook.

Unmarried great-granddaughters

In their eighties run it now.

A real Victorian stands,

Sagging, paint badly flaking,

But occupied, still ornate,

Across the street, its yard

Filled with old tractors and trucks.

The fridge motor stops. Silence.

As to Who Keeps Them, Who Knows

There are many secret homes
In the woods of memory,
Not collapsing, well-maintained,

Ready for you to find them,
But life and the mind conspired
To let woods overgrow them,

Tangled and consumed the paths,
So you thought you forgot them
When, actually, you lost them.

They’re there. They’re just hiding
And waiting for the blunder
That brings lost thoughts home to them.

Other or Nothing

We came to nothing
Via the absence
Of something. Something

Particular was
Multiple. Remove
All of those somethings,

And what you had left
Was none of something.
That none was nothing.

Except it wasn’t.
It was something else.
It’s a miracle,

In a way, nothing,
And that we grasped it,
Since everything

Emptied in some way
Of particulars
Is full of others.