Baedeker

Raise a black-heeled sky
Put it up to the Moon
Shaking the sand
From your mind

Delay, dead of night
When you reach
For the baedeker
Leather bound book
From another time

Red line for railroad
Black line for river
Carving the country
Sweetbread and liver

Maps that tell secrets
Maps that run backward
Learn to be lost now
Learn to be shattered

A dream where you don’t feel right
On your knees in an open field
Startled by silence
You don’t recognize

White light on a thousand lakes
Like paths of glass that someone breaks
Before the barefoot contortionist
Makes her grand debut
Blood leaks from the frozen Moon
You think about the wound
And wonder who will die?

Amber Nebraska
Pink Minnesota
Mint green for Kansas
Blue North Dakota

Red line for railroad
Black line for river
Carving the country
Sweetbread and liver

Raise a black-heeled sky
Put it up to the Moon
Shaking the sand
From your mind