Annals
Here in the outskirts,
where sea fossils
were left on the ridges,
I wrote
“The rain sluiced
the trees bare of the earth—”
this was my history, too,
here in the outskirts
nothing I do is witnessed, nothing I build lasts, I am happy,
work keeps me going,
I am remote but I know
the old world is still out there, too,
where the roads are intraworking,
the last dust and the vermin slip by, unnamed, here
self-protection is a shutdown of empathy,
I forget friends, the calendar
is a reliable prediction,
the paper that yellows in the oil-light
on an unmovable table, beneath
a window faced piper-westward,
my beard is growing now,
filling up my neck,
skin itchy,
while the dripping faucet
awls a hole into the sink
or the firmament
with well water
or the sun swivels
around the slow agon of time,
and bakes its mark into paint…
and I would rather not speak
of my address
or the address of my occupation,
both are on roads
named after locals.
