Confusion

I have no idea what to do
While she's pickling beets
None
Unless trying to predict tomorrow somehow counts
Or if washing my hands out back before breakfast
Is maybe as good

The stupidest thing I ever saw
Was a bird hit by a car
How could that be
How could it possibly happen
To what otherwise were entirely separate things

Maybe someday I'll understand
That some things that should
Don't have an equal anywhere
Of any kind
Like whatever dug the hole out back last night
Along side the well.

Ten Years

what would it have been like
If you'd had a brother
To trust someone like a bottle of dried glue
To never use blankets
To live this life as though you could always see
The ocean just beyond cornfields
Or smell common sense yawning close by

Whatever you'd give to each other you'd probably get back
As pieces of pie
Maybe by leaving each other
You'd get even closer
All you really know is that you will never know
The sky or square that's a brother

Instead try to imagine his spirit
As if he was real -
Not the night so much but an evening
A wheelbarrow left out in the rain
Or some beautiful anger traced around
The top of a head
Try to live like not a twin exactly
But a kind of double longing
Or think of hair that gets cut too short
But starts all over again
Anyway.

Foolish As Dawn

Teenagers should sit here at least once
They deserve this chance early on
Out on the powder road to Kisumu
Up on a tasseled bus as foolish as dawn
When there are just barely people passing on mist
When African trees hum half asleep
And breakfast is somewhere under pillow
Let the window show them

Growing up requires this tangled calm of waking
This morning's jolt of haze
The hissing sighs of tribesmen
Teenagers need this seat to turn fidgets into dreams
They need this seat behind a postcard's sheen
They should see the day's first rays smeared on buzzards

At the outset times like this are rare
Wild pups know it lined up against the sunrise waiting
So do millet seeds furrowed in moonlight waiting
And even this old road
Dew-lit and toothless
Takes its chances out on crumbling ledges
Roaring waiting for a bony view.