Visit
             from series NaPo


  I am that split levelled head
  beside the buzzing hilltop raspberries
  and buried grave pool, and there
  is the lake where geese summered
  under lazy willows from which they chased
  brown-braided girls up the hill
  for thirty years, where that basset hound
  flapped the birds back down to the mucked
  and beturtled water into which
  he would not go for anything, except
  to fish, maybe, but only
  from the dignity
  of a goddamned boat.

  A blank faced family moved in
  to my worn skin and they suck their toes
  up from the viscous bottom, gaze from my
  webbed eyes at the flag in the driveway
  where I smile with graveled teeth, and they
  listen with my ears to the white conversations
  of geese and birch trees.
  They twitch like dolls and are tinged
  for the saturate coloration of headaches.