Inside a small pocket
of a parking lot
on a hill just outside town,
there is a small
yet encompassing dance.
To say hips are involved
belies what constitutes
limits between the ears.
There is no real music,
that is true.
There is nobody to see
the intricate steps or notice
a soul-shifting smile.
The earth only shifts a little.
But there is a shift, maybe like
that of a bird tilting its wings
against the wind or maybe
a hippo losing itself to
weightlessness in water.
But it happens most days
around lunchtime
and it is glorious.

Climbing on the fence
looking up, up and seeing
some murky stuff hanging about
the stars or maybe they’re just
hiding. I get that. The need
to disappear after burning up
whatever was left
after the great stuff
was named. I have a name
too but it’s as forgettable
as whatever I do in my days.
I like to cling to the fence
at night and sing loudly
whatever comes to mind,
as the great stuff rolls through me
and I’m left with a murky sky,
a sore throat, and a place I’ve made
by letting go in a big howl.

It is quiet. Dark. I can hear
my own breathing, the refrigerator rumbling,
the wind. I can see some moonlight
seeping in the windows.
Moonbeams showcase a pair of shoes
by the door, the tv remote on the end table,
and long shadows of wintry bare trees
against the snow.
I imagine a dance in the dark, a place
far away where we can breathe, laugh.
The rhythm of my own heart
starts to impede on my daydreams
which have turned into willful nightdreams.
They are vague moving pictures in my mind
of wildflowers and forest music.

Back in its heyday,
the vinyl gleamed,
the chrome and gilt shone,
and the rugs were plush without remorse.
The women were sucked into girdles,
the men slick and crisp in suits.

It was restrictive and flawed
but contained in a way that you felt
a sense of abandon and freedom
when the lights were low.

Now, there is mold in the shag,
cracks in the chrome, and the beds
are long abandoned.
There are fetid tide pools
where sunbathers used to languish.
The dining hall is full of ghosts.

Some are afraid of the ruins
while some of us cling to them,
feeling the ache of being lost in time,
stained and broken, forgotten.

Lifting off over the field
hosts of wings
beating through flurries,
wind shaking trucks on the highway

cell towers amid the husks
ducks on a frozen pond
wheels and gears pushing
bread and concrete across the state

window dreaming
with glass and distance between
where we want to be,
starlings glide through snow.