WEBVTT

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This poem is called
"Moving Again."

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At night, the mountains
look like huge dim hens.

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In a few geological
eras, new mountains

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may shatter the Earth's shell
and poke up like stone wings.

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Each part must
serve for a whole.

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I bring my sons to the
base of the foothills

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and we go up from a scruff of
Ponderosa pines We startled.

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God, he swerves of magpies
who settle in our rising wake.

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Then there's a
booming prickly pear.

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"Jesus, Dad.

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What's that?"

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Willie asks.

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It's like a yellow tulip
grafted to a cactus.

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It's a beautiful wound the
cactus puts out to bear fruit

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and to be healed.

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If I lived with my
sons all year I'd

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be less sentimental about them.

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We go up to the mesa top and
look down at our new hometown.

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The thin air warps
in the melting light,

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like the aura before a migraine.

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The boys are tired.

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A tiny magpie fluffs into a
pine far below and farther down

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in the valley of child
support and lights,

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people are opening drawers.

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One of them finds a
yellowing patch of newsprint

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with a phone number penciled
on it from Illinois,

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from before they moved,
before Nicky was born.

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Memory is our root system.

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Verna, he says to himself,
because his wife's

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in another room, whose number
do you suppose this is?

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