In California

My heart became a drunken runt on the day I sunk in this shunt, to tap me clean of all the wonder and the sorrow I have seen, since I left my home: My home, on the old Milk Lake, where the darkness does fall so fast, it feels like some kind of mistake (just like they told you it would; just like the Tulgeywood). When I came into my land, I did not understand: neither dry rot, nor the burn pile, nor the bark-beetle, nor the dry well, nor the black bear. But there is another, who is a little older. When I broke my bone, he carried me up from the riverside. To spend my life in spitting-distance of the love that I have known, I must stay here, in an endless eventide. And if you come and see me, you will upset the order. You cannot come and see me, for I set myself apart. But when you come and see me, in California, you cross the border of my heart. Well, I have sown untidy furrows across my soul, but I am still a coward, content to see my garden grow so sweet & full of someone else's flowers. But sometimes I can almost feel the power. Sometimes I am so in love with you (like a little clock that trembles on the edge of the hour, only ever calling out "Cuckoo, cuckoo"). When I called you, you, little one, in a bad way, did you love me? Do you spite me? Time will tell if I can be well, and rise to meet you rightly. While, moving across my land, brandishing themselves like a burning branch, advance the tallow-colored, walleyed deer, quiet as gondoliers, while I wait all night, for you, in California, watching the fox pick off my goldfish from their sorry, golden state-- and I am no longer afraid of anything, save the life that, here, awaits. I don't belong to anyone. My heart is heavy as an oil drum. And I don't want to be alone. My heart is yellow as an ear of corn, and I have torn my soul apart, from pulling artlessly with fool commands. Some nights I just never go to sleep at all, and I stand, shaking in my doorway like a sentinel, all alone, bracing like the bow upon a ship, and fully abandoning any thought of anywhere but home, my home. Sometimes I can almost feel the power. And I do love you. Is it only timing, that has made it such a dark hour, only ever chiming out, "Cuckoo, cuckoo"? My heart, I wear you down, I know. Gotta think straight, keep a clean plate; keep from wearing down. If I lose my head, just where am I going to lay it? (For it has half-ruined me, to be hanging around, here, among the daphne, blooming out of the big brown; I am native to it, but I'm overgrown. I have choked my roots on the earth, as rich as roe, here, down in California.)