City bones

Cope with the humdrum

Only when they jangle upstate do they know

Narrow roads (chimney smoke)

The torch of moonlight

Shining through the ribs of pine and scarlet oak

Never once

In sixty summers

Did he ramble out beyond the bricks of home

So catch a ride (sail the tide)

Through broken barrows

Away from man’s light on this trolley of lost souls

Far from home

In shadow country

Crackling feet blanched by moon on top of stone

White and lithe (late at night)

Retreating softly

Across the hearth of land to spend a new year’s night