Joshua Tree Road, Arizona, 6 January 2017

Time slip: the sorrowful father was standing
Alone by the side of the road, his native habitat.
It was the wrong date for a day that had been
One of the impossibles, baroque. Sky lowered
Into the olive brown Mojave hills, the greasewood,
The creosote, the Joshua trees, and the unsealed tracks,
Like a heavy-set, elderly invalid easing onto a dirty bed.
The overly mournful father could swear he heard the clouds sigh.
Compose yourself, I thought. It goes on. It goes on.
You go with it. You go, too. The body of the clouds
Sagged more. The occasional vehicle on the sealed tar
Made the only wind. What day was it, then, if not this date?
It's a great fear, not to know how to end again, once you begin.
It's a great fear not to remember how to forget how to forget.
That other day, earlier, wronger, not this wrong, the atmosphere
Had been thinner, allowed a hazy haloed crescent moon
And Enif to glow through at dusk. Muzzle of Pegasus.
Made a wish. Placed a bet on the wings of a horse. Lost
Consciousness once, twice, three times. Here is body
Who is not body, sad by the side of the road without knowing
Why, without remembering the path that led here, without
Proper distinction between the body of self and of clouds.
The shadow of the body is not the shadow of the body.
It is the body of the whole. What whinnied from the sky?

Go back home, prodigal father. Go back home, wandering child.