Levitra Online
10/30/98
by Robert Lietz
Driving east at Halloween, hearing the news from Kosovo,
the news of gay-bashing in Laramie
Was it winking or was it rain on the cement
prompting the kids toward Halloween?
Were the neighbor homes and lights returning
to some order – assuming another
way toward precedent – here – where
the candidates stop for chops / the sniper
counts down shots like therapies. And the stacks
/ pallets – the scrap tubing / tanks –
as always and at best conditional – the littering
hues and smoke and rain there
on the pavement – and this trucker now –
missing the lanes cut down – taking
a barrel or two off to the side before he’s noticed –
burning the linings still – deciding
late and North and one more way toward Avalon.
So what if the corn’s been
taken off as scheduled? So what if the news –
more shrill and choiring reprisals –wears
the looks of streets where kids learn quick
and signature – if the rubberbullets –
spent in clearing off the corners – assume
our attention now – because this weather
has to quit? The autumn leaves spin down
like trump where no one’s counting.
Was that a boy spread-eagle on the fence-wire
when I noticed? I’m climbing that hill
two blocks – to that house across from Schmitt’s –
enjoying this march toward Halloween –
these winds the kids climb vanishing – pulling
the world up around – away from
the blocks cats dig – meaning to locate industry
and something again besides – where
the slopes drop off to pay-per-views and buyers.
It’s autumn and after and ahead –
where the winds shook down the many leaves
into that field. It’s fall in the smoke
and barrel fires – in the sooty rorshachs
roofing country houses – speaking necessity
and need – in the grid-iron iconography
/ the banked leaves the last of daylight’s
poking under – that witch and her sister –
dressing the shedding oak and phone-pole –
proving there’s no worse risk than flying
in the dark / than their own
free -fall – when the nightmares
snap on them!
*
So the forest greens and forest scarlets
draw us home – finding the routes
by heart – the shape of that doe – a step
or two steps shy in tractor light –
spilled toward invisible and less – a part
of the evidence no less – a child
no less / and something else besides –
lost to the rust-hued earth and spans
of treated lumber – besides this sudden
expensive red – haunting the range of loss
and optical adjustments. Some evening’s
desire’s just about as much as we can stand.
I’m thinking of you Elizabeth –driving
to you Elizabeth – remembering
your Monday eyes / the weight of a week between
/ another Friday’s traveling – calming
myself with Porky’s music and Pittsburghese.
And paying these debts in Time –
seeing these lights in neighbor homes
through thinning branches – the leaves
as they drop around / blow down among
the limbs that scatter them – figures
that rise from smoke and count on our decoding.
But what have the colors ever said –
pumpkin and noir / the garage flags ever said
/ the news as it was – behaved
as the old enemies expected – kids shimmering
as kids will – seeing the kids on fields
where the legends made to play – looking
like runners-up – in their assailable attire –
and speaking the scores another time –
a sentence the past accelerates –
believing autumn’s just ahead – even
when rain quits – and in the hearts
that urge the stories
to strong forms.
***

Robert Lietz (photo by Elizabeth Williams)
He has completed several print and hypertext (hypermedia) collections of poems for publication, including Character in the Works: Twentieth-Century Lives, West of Luna Pier, Spooking in the Ruins, Keeping Touch, and Eating Asiago & Drinking Beer.
[ z ē ' n ĭ t h ] -noun 1. an arch wherethrough gleams that untraveled world…


