Great clips

called from People
magazine and crying kids
by a

forgive me if i consider you
in terms of universals
and ignore everything actual about you

a member of that class
which prompts the rusticistic brush
which fires the noble imagination
with images of sheperdesses

start your clipper and scissor
and pull back my hair
long as a son of David's, caught
in the tree of your fingers,
feet kicking, and washed in your simple
friendly chatter

the Christ made himself lower than the angels
and I sit here like a cloaked Zeus
and if I don't respond to you, my dear,
it's just from the thunder ringing in my ears


good god, lower than the angels
real shepherd, god I thought you were
like a hippie
all strangers here, we are
strangers in this familiar land, rolling
on wheels of zeal, heads high

sit me down for an absolute
haircut,
raise me from dirt
wind whistling like the spirit of god
over the water spritz
your people are good.
they are.

After a while the rain stopped

with the windows down in the rainy dusk
and the road glinting by the cracks of the clouds
a crowd of buildings cracks where the railway ran
sedentary trains rust
leaning on grain elevator curves
i will dip my two fingers down from the interstate bridge
and what is it that draws my hand up like a shamaan over the scene
to feel the spirits dying and all the dry words of the day
swept back into the space our wheels make.