I sat for a moment in your town
where you lived with a woman
you thought you wanted to know
but watched the woman you thought she could be.
People there wore brightly cleaned clothes,
and their trucks hauled no hay, nor dipped
into any ranch-puddle or hole.
Yours is a slick town. Tight,
like a clean central clock on a silver brick tower.
I wonder. Each time that clock rang,
the one you must have heard,
for there was no real clock-tower there—
unless it is the intersection on Main Street
that ticks with revving engines and squeaking brakes
at every green or yellow,
keeping time with the pace of stop lights
and lunchtime minutes that strike their truck-horn job whistles—
at each hour this clock marked,
did that inch you another click
away from your town?
Where did the people in your town get those smiles,
the ones that shine from 9 to 5?
Is anyone there curious
how the highway has turned into a shopping mall
stretched through the center
where cows chewed and sorghum grew
from drought-cracked fields?
But you, in that place,
where the pin-light of stars is invisible,
outshined by the polished wheel covers of urban pickups,
you pushed your heart into it like a chisel.
Your chisel broke,
and the chips of the round rock you hammered
pierced the corners of your eyes
and drained the cataracts like slow blood tears.
