I Dreamed of Fixing Everything

There’s tar at the edge of the new asphalt road;

Cold in winter, soft and sticky in the summer sun

There’s nothing like a paved road/

I guess it takes a gravel, dusty, dirt-filled one to know the difference.

When I walk along my mental tar-edged road,

it’s December: dark, lights bubbling in the window evergreen,

me longing for a way to comprehend

my aching ribcage, frantic bloody cuticles.

Did I eat that other box of cookies, and what will I do for the money?

Dig into the old purse,

the cushions fed by drunken, snoring, singing, whining, biting, sniping parties?

How I dreamed of fixing everything.

I new I could!

(Throat aching, fingers hurting, luminescent cookies in the closet corner.)

I’ll wake up willing, armed and ready: mending broken pieces, gluing back the days of childhood. 

Visiting the slant-roofed farmhouse,

grass high, hollow tree, full of whiskey.

 Dinner at the table with the extra piece of plywood,

how I dreamed of home, carsick, staring at the fading countryside.

Yet what I see now looking back is a gold-brown day,
 the rosy sunset evening
spinning stars

a wooden floor worn down and soft

a drumstick stuffed with bread and sage.

Southern Colorado, White Farmhouse, from a  Bus