you are stoned
beneath
cold fluorescents
you are two hundred miles
away from lake erie in
the first summer of your
son’s tiny life and
the news isn’t
good
a tumor possibly
or a body dug up or
maybe as many as
a hundred
maybe the neighbor disappeared
and his wife found
hacked to pieces in the
basement
all of this talk of
a simpler america that
never was
and do you still dream of
the cages
your grandfather helped build?
of the women
herded into them at
gunpoint?
even here
three hundred years later
in this air-conditioned room
there is till the smell
of burning witches
is still the stench of
self-righteousness
and what the two of us hide
is the fact
that we know each other
that we number
the bleeding horse among
our friends
and at the end of the day
you lock up your desk while
i kiss your wife good-bye
we pass on the street
without a word
and two hours later
the first candle is lit on the
hill of fifteen crosses
like everything before it
it will fail to
drive the dark away
