Imagining America

He carried the sun in a wooden pail
and threw it out with the slops

before a breakfast of eggs over easy,
coffee, and a cigarette to bless the fire.

He offered gophers and eagle talons from his hearth
and drilled their bones into the dusty earth.

The sun rose like a tomahawk
and split the creek in two.

All day the pines bent to a blue wind,
herds grazed, he held the wolf at arm's length.

Late September the dead men came
due east from beyond the rim.

They spoke like thunder. From their wooden boats
they traded insults and poured fire down his throat.

They stretched his hide across the valley
and spun his scalp in the loom of the sky.

Bones dissolved to lemon curd
and fletched the sediments of the river bed.

Stars fell like snowdrops into the lake
and swelled the meltwater above the breaks.

In one turbulent winter
he was lost without a trace.

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