*written New Year's Eve 1999, Taos, NM

"you're sick of hangin' around, and you wanna travel,
get tired of travellin', you wanna settle down..."-Greatful Dead

I want to take the Walt Whitman exit
from this road-novel America
Show me to the dream
that is promised by rural creeks and streams

I need to feel the sun, hot upon my naked flesh
beside the Gulf again, humid
as I share it with an as yet unmet beloved

I want the divide between creation and engineering
to tumble like towers
like ivory towers struck head-on
by the gypsy power
of natural light...
SUPERnatural darkness
The reflection of Orion in a lunar eclipse

I want the concrete and blacktop parallels
of West Texas oilfields
To be cultivated with milo and grazed by antelope
And the bridges torn down
and the cables unstrung
and the airports burned to ash on the ground
and the ships to be scuttled
the traffic noise muffled
the fields returned for the insects to farm

I want to stand in one place
and know:
THIS IS IT
Pure, Intended,
Nature Incarnate
to wake up in the morning...
to wake up in my senses
America, free again
no prisons, no fences

Wheeler Peak echoes in memories haunt
Tucson sunsets,
Golden Gate fogs...

Poetry stripped to Desolate Bones
Zen Bones
No more compelled to rattle around