Simple

egg salad sandwiches from Tim Hortons
in the red truck I borrowed from my boss

that will be lunch for us today, for me and my boyfriend

our lunch hour is 30 minutes and we drive quickly as we eat--
we have to run home to let the chickens out--
we talk about the things we want and how
money is tight for now, but things will be fine
and where we want to live, to raise kids (one day)

we'll collect the eggs after work

we work at the same place
me in the office typing and faxing
and him in the yard
building things and cutting lumber

nights I waitress for extra cash
in a dingy country-style restaurant with
brown formica tables and cowboy regulars
(I feel like my intelligence is wasted there
and I want to paint and have friends who smoke
black cigarettes and wear fluvogs and
paint angsty paintings, talk about Edie Sedgwick and
modernism postmodernism unmodernism)

but for now everything is simple
in a white-trashy way
trying to build a pretty little future
and liking the sweet earthy taste
of hope

June, the dragonflies
appear-- glib emissaries
of damp and of light

regrets

light the biggest match, she said
good idea
warmth/heat/fire
because

theres that lit-t-le prickle of water-chill--
the deep end, the drop off,
the part where you dive in and the icy water clutcHES you
(yeah, that part)--

a lit-t-le bit of that stuck to the base of my spine, so

LIGHT the BIGGEST match
or maybe
SING
THE LOUDEST CAMPFIRE SONG
with a voice like an angry cello
do all the blasting heated summertime sparky things
to Roar Up the Inferno, to melt and scorch
and peel and blister

that stubborn cold patch

it
was put there
by a careless turn of the mind
and
responsibility dictates
responsibility-- that is, it is
my fault, my
fault altogether

I turned there
and now I can only turn to light some sort of pyre
to
(cleanse?)

whether you are held up
or held back
you have always held the means to release yourself

ten year reunion

smash razzle-dazzle isms
of sunshine on storm-washed Penticton streets
and here where we wandered drunkenly
the night before
no imprint of the raucous voices or
coarse delights

all washed away and under over into
something brighter and new and
bafflingly similar to
sodden wanderings and musings of the years before

fresh

what we were returns when the grime is swished away

all of us gathering
and unravelling the mysteries of who
and how did we become what did we were did you
how was that and when did they
the murmurs of rebuilding/regressing

familiar smells of the Okanagan earth

and we might come away with more of what
we already were

cougar tracks

space


fills out, breathing
and surrounds us
so time doesn't exist but space does
nt exist either


connect to

my young new love
time does
nt bother me but why when i speak to him
why do i condense my life so that
growinguphighschoolcollegeuniversity was just
something complicated that happened a few months ago and he

expands

so that all of the everything that made him twenty years old
actually took an eon

leaving the desert

everywhere I go
I am missing
someplace I'm not

so I might as well go
I might as well go, I tell myself

I try to convince myself
it's time to go

but the weight in my pockets
of the possibilities here
the possibilities everywhere

are tearing-- I want to stay but they are tearing through

holes in my pockets
everything I'm picking up is falling right through

maybe I'm leaving a trail
maybe I'm leaving clues

and I don't know what I'm hoping to find
or what I am hoping
might find me but

at least there's
some sort of indication that I was here
briefly
and how long
before the vultures and gypsies
carry even
my small bleached bone trail
away

so find me
or let me find my way

soon