Safekeeping
Gallows’ birches ghost up
the timberland, pitched sleek.
Hardly any limbs and shiftless
save for anemic gusts of wind
that do not remove anything
but dust. If dust. Neither here
nor there we scavenge,
we pickpocket, like it’s our day job,
this tomorrowing.
Over gourd stems and bottle
caps we traipse and collect,
our spoony shadows elking
the midday. This trial and error
of the westward ho. What to claim
or not, how to guess what any
leave-taking will require
the farther you get from familiar.
Out of gloom, and coveting, miles
of quarantine and pilgrimage.
Approaching a fable.
Then fabled.
