They’re out there, swaying in the wind
Beside the braided silver of the Virgin River,
Which means only that they were in my head
At some point during my enduring living,
Like Stevens’ windy citherns were in his,
Once, reduced to one on the edge of space
Near the end of him. Mine stand at the edge
Of nothing, really, maybe time, but so stands
Everything always
At the cutting edge of change,
Always change, itself everything on the edge
Of nothing. The cottonwoods there are gold
Into mid-December, when holiday greetings
Get exchanged by golfers under talkative palms.
The poplars shelter small birds that burst out
And dart back in again, cheeping and competing,
All year. If you walked in from the river banks,
Through the gold cottonwoods, over the greens,
Down the avenue of poplars and under the palms,
You could duck into a dark room of tourist kitsch
With a long, polished cherrywood bar
On the left and golf clubs to rent on the right.
In the center, at the back, you could find
The closest human approach to the meaning
Or at least the true sense of the universe
At a glass counter where you could pay to play
Numbers carefully constrained and random.
Someday, somewhere somebody will win,
But until then we we're all equally likely to lose,
While the wind moves briskly in the branches.
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