SUGAR MULE #24

BYTIME IN YANGLAND

one

Cold midfall rain the

yinland prairie mudden

and morning a tardle

night getting sooner

each wind breath counted a

time to betake

arrived from yangland in rented truck as I had departed

the grand finale

she had written, I wanted to be around had meant to move

anyway, Eva was thin and joking at home very old, we

bantered in Norwegian, Swedish

jag tänker ge mi ut på en lång resa

troligen dröjer det innan vi ses igen

either might have said, cruel, true, Hjalmar Gullberg had cut

out forever on his own, was it that or dull feuding remark to

mate, she went in the

sykehus sjukhus

while I walked

through Fargo autumn in rare sun. Visited Trefoil Park and my pet

basswood, which stood unchanged, magnificent. The town is

getting younger

jotted in log, went to bunk at old farm miles away, my sister’s

now who attended Eva told me anon that she had come back to the

apartment was quitting

all of her medications

there will never be another

like your everlovin mother

scrap of tune in my head, I unloaded truck but did not hunt to

settle had left my vee-doubleyew in yangland with camping

household aboard, visited Eva daily, would rollick on carpet at

onetime girlfriend’s, not quite right, hard to withdraw

the elder grove had

man bones in it not marked

flat seabed country

mired with rain again

mud to much enhinder

movement on road

Eva had mentioned nursing home was on morphine now wanted

Hospice

would do the

finale

in apartment, twilit room, one could only sit adrift with her but

mark the clarity when she talked who had been a teaching marm

Dakota magazine writer a pioneer too in divorce, was keeping

mind in her mideighties would die well but when no one knew,

I had agreed to drive a limo to yangland the time fixed, hated the

churn of getting to or out of mud farm, could not stay

you comin or gnat

she chews to do dat

tune fragment uninvited

I sat with Eva the last a.m., read newspaper. She did not look or talk.

Breaths. On her way to mahasamadhi. Don’t want to be a skipjack.

My sister will tend to everything

the rain went hard to make me late to bus, I got there in time

and watched a dun damp afternoon move to lighten toward Saint

Paul where I drank had conversation, Highland, Cherokee, in

limo I ran all day all night a climbing

outside temp

noted on dash, awake

there will never be another

like your everlovin mother

y no volveráááá

end line a gift of texmex radio at three in what morning,

Tucumcari’s maybe, I had shanked myself would land at

Phoenix winter home to limo, smog palms I knew

you were nice to my baby, I should ditch it

Minnesota doctor with a wink in the tiled

vestíbulo

gave me ride in it to station, nothing too near in Del Webb

Arizona

del web

de la tela

tela mundial

you ain’t going back

to live in no shack

almost did not reach it, traffic snag, my car was up in

mountain town, the rim

ain’t no coach

at time they had told me on phone I learned, had to walk

through worldwide desert slum to get to other depot would

take a city bus and catch the shuttle at Greenway

it hit me in shank of afternoon, midtrek, vacant lot, a quick dead

pain in low right shank, tight iron anklet. I had to drag the leg

but made the connections, it went away, I had known toned

hiking muscle to cramp, not this, hurt that ringed a limb had

tines to it, woman met the shuttle on darkened Mogollon

I got a call, your mom died this afternoon

y no volveráááá

I had been out five days, thought to return in car to

deathwatch, but cremation of Eva, gawd

not one more bone to

wetten in the ravine

who had once built fire in ice country school, heaped it big

at dude ranch Montana, a Roosevelt young time, with age

turned Nixonian Reaganite, devout

you said goodbye then, achieved closure

the woman asked me

incinerate now

the ashes will be

somewhere out of the mud

a lighted room

too very soon a

memorial service

that Eva had written even taped many minutes for

jag har ordnat en mängd detaljer i samband med färden

jag har förberett allt utom själva resrouten

had left no comma or period to others meaning chance, I

could not attend but went on tenting tour of yangland the

low desert at

Black Mountains

Alamo Dam

to a wild-ass lullaby

Organ Pipe

Coronado

Chiricahua

Fort Bowie

wanted a winter den and camped a week to think at foot of

Mount Graham, meet night alone where days were next to hot,

noting the

painful effect of the nature descriptions

The Devil in Massachusetts

untruth, ideomania

dreaming that a

pretty young woman came and embraced me and

said, you’re Taverner, I’m Twenty

I hiked mountain rock in sun to reread Japanese poetry

Crime and Punishment

ere the light went, had not much beer at fireside with night into

late autumn now, Eva was gone

but dat’s okay

it’s a latter day

yo lo leí en el Libro de Mormonnnn

where to hide, wait out the hard desert coolth not cold, but

Yuma elevation one hundred, I

said goodbye then

to noon

Noon Creek

Noon Ridge

the tentsite ants a few of which I had put to

kremasjon

denying them the life in beauty that I somehow merited, her

loss a narcotic moment, I knew another

painful effect

that of

bright afternoon on one who has just come out of a movie

demerited

ah bin infectit

ah bin rejectit

and took the long west road that dropped through Tucson, a

hundred saguaros

giving me the finger

in as many ways

to Gila Bend, petroglyph campground utter quiet, no one there

it’ll get down in the forties tonight

the host an old Norwegian said

General Patton brought his tanks out here, you see that hill, that

dot, you meet a lot of women in Yuma

went early morning up the butte, dark rock not a glyph,

isolated naked range on range the view, good tank country

between, atop it the dot a ruined tin shack of command, I

have to look around in Yuma I thought, may find the real

Twenty

translate with her from

pícaro to picaroon

pícara to picayune

live as two where nature has nothing to say but sun not have

to think, I want to

stand up for the crazy and stupid

Edward Abbey citing Whitman, may take out an ad

Scandiknavian seeks relaytionship. Crazy, stupid okay, don’t step

on my new Swede shoes

or lie down with in bytime forever, my hemithinking on the

approach the low ragged Gilas ahead

y mas allá

the yangland heart a Yuma I did not know had once ridden

through, imagined

warm autumn morning

on the agricanal

flat as Dakota but with cotton and date, lettuce. Breath of weary

river, salt sand. Trouble in heaven

I found in an ar-vee Cadillac road jam, all had thronged here

at once, the day after judgment it had to have been when into

heaven the righteous will be received and see the glory

fight over the last nylon broom in megamarket

where did you get that dustpan, are there any left, how much do you

want, ten dollars enough goddamn you

was it Eva in the aisle at K mart, had to have been, the Nova

Scotia bumper velleity

I’d rather be sealing

not meant, I walked to relief in inken shade of old town but

saw the handwritten sign on a peluquería

winter visitors welcome

bienvenido lechugueros

how to say snowbird. What wit. Spend the green or pick it, aha

would know more soon have to mock myself

bytime not to change

an egret movement

I camped at Mittry Lake the edge of town, not a tent site, reed-

thicket nook wherein many a gringo

pescador

had drunk, another effluvium I did not like, unnameable, woke

to the same iron ache, it had hit the left hip now would not let

me go, I had to

tow that leg

when Eva was mad at someone would

stick in a needle that hurt

my sister told me, true, too bad, I made it anyway

to Bihari motel. Have to wash up, hunt a job and digs no matter. I’ll

walk it off. An orange tree in the yard

would know more soon that a woman had been killed and

dumped in Mittry Lake a week ago, was twenty

some come to the yangland

y no vuelvennnn

two

I took in the quiet of the hard apartment, sand on tile,

a memory of salt air, grapefruit tree at window,

tangelo, had been out a month at night would not

see full moon now

A winter in Yuma not to

forget what had tracked you to it

Colorado and Wyoming

had washed this way

would await the heritance money to come and I also meant

to think had always done it afoot, man of the road, sitting

a death to me, but my last camp out an iron ache had hit

one hip, not let go, Mittry Lake

her feet at the end were knarred up

and minded you of old China

there will never be another

like your mother

would get a job in the psych-tech trade, read too, what

novels I had not intended to skip that had to do with

native yinland plain not Arizona California Mexico

Ole Rølvaag

Sinclair Lewis

Wright Morris

Larry Woiwode

I did not think to stay in yangland byplace, would look

however

the main town atop a loaf of

brown-sugar sand no need to climb

on Pilot Knob to see the dunes

Algodones

reek of burnt scrap wood one morning led my eye to smoke

rise out toward northern naked mountain Castle Dome, one

other life I had not known might have been moving to meet

me there, who knew, I would have to watch

unwonted gray the Sonoran

like a giant Latin plaza

gray rain wind driving all its weight

into your chest

and walk, I made me do it, tow that leg to East Main Canal,

egret, a heron, to the Yuma

cárcel

museum the market, I had a potato and refrieds awoke to

loud young angry music three ay-am but only quiet lasted

you cannot have been more alone

than now wives gone and parents dead

a cockroach is afraid of you

in the night room

I dreamt that a child’s hand arrived in padded mailer the

middle digit missing, my third wife had sent it, I had

wanted no home or children had known too late almost,

a road man, what not to do, what to, I got in the car and

visited

San Luís

Imperial Dam

Martínez Lake

the Gila

Mountains’ knifelike rock, weird mining ruin

you were open, they needed not have dug

I told the earth and climbed a needle peak in middecember

no shirt on to find byview of what might happen yet

a ten-thousand ar-vee elder

camp has taken the desert down

to whatever might be left in

it of meaning

a friend that worked in government Indian health

wanted to see me on a job trip to Yuma, bird

woman Rima to my mind, ivorine yet weightless,

did not much laugh, we had hiked on Coconino

Plateau and I had directed her to

Green Mansions

Rima had a limp now too but could fly, we ate at

Mi Ranchito

she heeded my look what little I said, mayhap would find

in me the dad that had burnt to death, we two remaining

guarded, I talked of

Robinson Jeffers

whom she a medical did not know, would enjoy

if part of you flew to Morro

Bay another would follow and

drunk on the wind be ridden of

the doubt you saw

I would give her a pamphlet on the coming

Salton Sea International Bird Festival

not hear if she had read him, have enjoyment of my own, the

lone apartment, radio no tee-vee to interrupt the silence, high

winter sun to walk not limp in now, I found a job at modern

contract madhouse run by an em-bee-ay, marine airfield next

to it, yard gravel spotlit in the antedawn, the woman I would

call mad sainte harrowing the ward did not mind me

hi handsome, I got raped as a kid, I’m a virgin though

tall epileptic Mormon Iroquois from Syracuse, original

salt city

of the one whose droll faith had led to another, I quit, they

kicked her out, at a chance meeting in market the mad sainte

told me that she wanted home to

Zion

I paid too much for a mountain bike she had, ticket money,

and I noted makeup earrings when she delivered it but took her

to the station not the night room, went outing of my own to

El Golfo de Santa Clara

gerontology coach, all day

avocet feeding with a gull

in dirt seasand where you can buy

two naked-women pictures on

one tarjeta

my wash dried on the line before I had the half of it hung,

radio man inserted a glottal stop tween

Yuma

and

Arizona

the graven date in rock at foot of Cargo Muchacho read seventeen

sixty-five, what had I not intended to skip in the novels that

had to do with my yinland

Rølvaag and Morris the better at style

I wrote in log

Lewis a cartoon, Woiwode not, the novel comes of a belief in Christ,

the word made flesh, all Western art, naturalism, the roman-fleuve

goes on and on out of duty, stewardship

not much to draw me but I would leave the yangland anyway,

faint-scented note that came would date my plan, the next week

bird woman in a road daze, animated

I’m moving to Minnesota

Indian agency transfer, we went to Century House in old

town to see the olden parrots, would maybe hike in the north,

each find one other life we had not known, a delicate Rima

hug denied the much that had not happened, been said

tangelo blossom early March

curlew movement on the park lawn

evening will bring you traily wind

edge of weather

Janet Lewis

dead at ninety-nine, wrote me once, I thought as a kid that

Eva had gone to hospital to die, baby sister came of that, I

now took part-time job of trucking wealthy old to clinic,

treatment for depression

slap therapy

the big cee

magnetic field

to gleamy thriving medico hutments, shade to wait in

maybe you and she had fallen

in avian love already

had the affair and not known or

even noticed

Glenway Westcott on

odi et amo

thought poet mad at the gods for making him undersexed but

how would undersexed man know who yet had heat to write or

act, I hated no one anywhere yet needed to deride a place, say

Yuma is the last refuge of a

scoundrel or patriot in order to get to the road

in Yuma every day is everyone’s first day on the job, nobody knows

what to do

I sold the mountain bike for too much money would give it

to mad sainte in Zion if I dared to stop, or mail it

Catullus had wanted a thew

of arm and mind he lacked and saw

in Lesbia got quick bird love

and a bird hate

would not be going to Rima nest in Kingman, Flagstaff

either, too-known byground of the mourning cloak, I had

looked my bytime to an end

turn to the now of the human

yinland past or have it adeemed

tänk på svenska

there will never be another

like your mother

three

had done three years’ genealogy muck work in the yinland

and gone on a hike jag to western Colorado but winter

downing from Grand Mesa at the end of fifth month I had

packed the old Crown Vic and taken highway

one twenty-eight

to Moab

one ninety-one

to Bluff

one sixty-three

to Kayenta

one sixty

and

eighty-nine

to Flagstaff

Ain’t no

magnificent brumal

numbers Tom McGrath only what

you would not even call sigils

on the map to mark a way

red-rock desert with

Mount Peale

Abajo Peak

awatch went brightening up to wooded high plateau, I

knew the country too damned well enough, the winter

light of it

un milagro

no need on Merriam Crater to wave goodbye to

den resignierten Glanz

of moment running out when the light had only started, I

did not know anyone well enough to stay with impromptu,

thirteen years of the town had given me much not that but I

had found a love in the land would ever mind, so followed

highway

eye-seventeen

to Ash Fork

eighty-nine

to Prescott, night catching me on the pass before Yarnell,

rain on

seventy-one

and

sixty

that got me to Burro Jim Motel in Aguila too spent to

watch the dark wet road anymore

numbers also mark a route through

time and twelve one oh-two is now

nine eleven meant a byway

in time maybe around it

I had not planned to be in the yangland but Colorado had

not worked out in many a way and my once landlord in

Yuma had written would rent to me, I would not have

minded a return to scene of hibernation ninety-eight

ninety-nine, did want

to feel Yuman again

tired old local japery, hone my

good sense of Yuma

and

Yuma is dry

the tee-vee weatherman said, I needed a job that paid however

work all day so you can fuck all

night so you can work all day so

you can fuck all night so you can

work all day so you can fuck

owned a psych-tech license good in California and knew of

one unit where I could do on-call at a high wage, it would

not be too Sisyphean, when I left Burro Jim Motel in the

clear forenoon was only to wink at Yuma the yangland heart

en route to El Centro the Anza Borrego, approaching the

latter I had to cross wide field of oh-ar-vees which minded

me of El-Ay San Diego nigh at hand, I camped just one

unlonely night at Tamarisk Grove, fled back to Imperial

County to wrangle an interview at the unit

do you even have transportation

thin desert puritan woman wanted to know, she needed me

but would have to wait on aitch-kew approval

might take a month or more

I knew where to do my part of the waiting, that day I talked

to the old landlord reclaimed my very pied-à-terre

come not so driven haunted now

you have homed to the weatherless

yangland town of light who were

born and raised over the hill

and relaxed, grapefruit tree the tangelo had not changed,

the cat had, one named

Neko

new gray ruling

jardín

presence, I did not have to plan hard not to stay this time,

could ignore time where all I had been for the moment in

which I was walking, Yuma the same too, a wide avenue

thick with elder traffic, an agricanal that led away from the

racket to burnt Sonoran, old downtown calm and shady, mall

markets packed, the light was utter that in ninety-eight

ninety-nine had overcome the loneliness and loss in me but I

did feel mild desperation not knowing when I would go the

walk of a one mere man on desert pavement have to stop, the

radio mentioned a cold front

wind too big the visibility

none in the dunes the sand plows have

come out you get it in your teeth

and nary a spit of rain

windfall around the tangelo tree seemed ripe might not have

been ready I thought, poems should ripen on the tree but

Mandelstam’s had had no chance, warm winter light showed up

again on a farther peak in Cargo Muchacho, resumed ubiquity

you take me anywhere but down

the radio incanted, I lived without tee-vee had to get the

news entertainment from that a paper a magazine a book all

which had to wait as I drove to

King of Arizona

Kofa

wildlife preserve and climbed a high red peak that Castle

Dome overlooked, had to hug the rock on hard way down, took

a few plant cuts would have mattered at home not in the

mountains, I had needed gotten a lot not enough of it, this,

in Colorado, trail movement exhilaration, making up for a

North Dakota time where I had mucked around in my Swedish

förfluten tid

a sad genealogy gambol, had disinterred both truth

och mysterium

you could see the woody iron

earth of

Järnboås

migrant day

not an end to the beginning

of the ramification

which I had needed as well but had chosen to return to what

awaited me ever, the moment, go out of or into the past at

will, not stay twined with all that had been

you are in my thoughts and prayers

a young woman wrote from North Dakota, the heart call of

tradition, it moved me but echoed an elder faith that chanted

on in

A Perfect Peace

I did not seek art or find it in Amos Oz’ humane sincere

unwitting propaganda, nation qua self-made ghetto, no

escape, enemy the victim out there, enslavement to place

and past the way of a faith that had had to deny itself any

inlet to now but that of wartime, found only news

go north in the refuge to a

canyon that has nonbiblical

native palms in it ironwood

barberry to mend your mind

I would visit remote Palm Canyon later, went home to rid me

of white

Old Testament

beard and with a censorious prominent watery eye got into

the job at mad unit, all-night manic routine of shots and

paperwork the commute too long, to do two shifts and quit,

marines were

shipping out

of Yuma as the

Butch

administration readied venge hit two, I did not have to go

could be here all the way in tireless yangland reverie take

low pay as work coach to the disabled

you are to see a client at

Indian casino but meet

the smell of your navy bootcamp

in the forenoon parking lot

talk with Latonya, twenty-eight married mother her man in

Yew-Ess-Bee-Pee, who trained me in, good smart coach that

loved everyone, the job, said

Rodney and Latonya would not be a couple you’d invite to your

party sight unseen

not in the

South

she knew, owned not a minim of hatred could laugh at it in

another, the boss a nervy

North Carolina

exmarine gave me the word

I used to dress like you Rod, still do when I go to a funeral

in warm tone sotto voce, what he meant who knew, a narrative

I had written went up on an

ezine website

a story more twanged than told as the

Columbia

went down apart with Ilan Ramon aboard it, wore the

Magen David

on his arm, the nomenclature

Columbia

Israeli

Palestine Texas

too fraught to believe

the work of James Joyce gave you a

whiff of cabbala meant nothing

but your mother’s ashes have come

in the mail this very day

on death of Eva I had inherited taken up her cladograms

genealogi

my numbing interest an outshoot too of elder tradition, now

I had the cremains to strew in Montana lake she had known,

early womanhood, a note of foreintent to leave the yangland

again I thought, would I then head

hem

to North Dakota

to me, this town, this place, this area is nothing. Might as well

be visiting Fargo ND for all it means to me

Edward Abbey returning to town of origin, in winter mood

I did not drive out of Yuma at all even look at mountain

horizon, it might as well have been Fargo, would stay the

nonce however and the nonce might not end, if it did

a young one at Snowy Mountain

California might welcome

you or a poet that you know

in the Lode have time to talk

I had newfound relatives in Idaho, would not have to be

North Dakota or where else, I might remain be kept in the

yangland to watch another midmarch hummingbird patrol the

jardín

Latonya had a way to her now was quitting to work in

nearby college, at farewell agency lunch I had gumbo soup

and we hugged too long, planned to meet alone sometime

for a drink

inkling that you are about to

fall in love with someone who is

about to fall in love with you

there ain’t nothing quite like it

what might have kept me, went through early stages, a

Jubelgreis

never knew until he fell in love how empty his good life had

become, up to a hurt, she made me wait which women in my

prime had not tended to do, they did not call a man right back

at my age, an entertaining thought, it took age however to

put a rein on an emotion that could not get anywhere with

too-young married mom who went to church was

prolife

prowar

voted

Gee-Oh-Pee

my age averted melancholia, we had the drink

curlews are in Sanguinetti

Park again a late March morning

you are glad to be alive to

have a walk above time in

had been nice to feel it, did we think to meet once more I

could not remember, had Idaho Montana in mind and set me a

hard-work regimen to earn road money but felt at ease within

my moving solitude, Hermann Bühl alone on downclimb of

Nanga Parbat sensed a companion following, died on Chogolisa,

true human oddity Maurice Wilson wrote during solo way up

Everest that

someone

was

in the tent

with him

all the time

dead two days later, no one shadowed my gadding last week

or watched me pack the car, what a rest old Yuma had been, how

nice to have felt it, I only wished that I had seen more of the

yangland in bytime

Gran Desierto

Sonora

mayhap, had not dared take Crown Vic there during

tightened security

with Mexican units moving to support the

Butch

administration at

la frontera

or the refuge I had had one taste of where someone might have

been waiting

I went to Kofa High

lovely Mexicana Yuman said to a work group I was in which

raised the matter of barberry ironwood, palm I had not seen

that throve in shade, bighorn, quiet to match my quietism,

passing north on highway

ninety-three

I sneaked a look up turnoff road

you have only marked the route to

a human or another love

that you may find and ever mind

in shadows of Palm Canyon

four

Not a rain that summer when you

hiked down into Hell’s Canyon

wood-smoky lack of wind on the Nub

and Gospel Hump you ate dust heat

Idaho had relieved me of wet May in the yinland, given me

canyon and prairie a season that did not change, burnt air

to inhale, I took an apartment above

Greer Café & Tavern

on the Clearwater, a rickety veranda looked out, nigh to

where Lewis and Clark had come to it, downstream from

Kamiah

said

cammy-eye

the

Heart of the Monster

origin rock of Nez Perce, had a few-mile drive to northern-

state bedlam the psych-tech momentary work I needed, a

longer one to Lewiston home of relatives, but a season that

did not change would end and I meant not to stay around had

emailed mad unit in Eureka would interview when I got to

California, made a night dash

Oregon a home to you in

part of childhood the valley

a way that went ranging to the coast

where Gramma and Grampa waited

through

Pendleton

John Day

Cascadia

Corvallis

on which I saw the road not man and set up tent at mild wet

two in the morning, ocean beach I would know in daylight

had walked it as kid and young poet

gulls in a splash of warm light

coast along the Waldport bridge

and then the sun is gone

I had written in maiden poesy fragment but awoke with tight

throat an ache in the lung no want or strength to greet the

high surf the drum of which hit my whole thorax, I had to

will me out of bag, off the sand, or drink thick air I could

not inhale might even have drowned in, all thought gone of

a walk on shore that had turned unknown unfriendly, mere

look or smell of a tide pool would have made me throw up,

was time to leave

the sea town would have to remain

in memory and the wet

print it had left in the words of you

have to survive more ill weather

in light too hard too weak at once I drove back to valley,

took

eye-five

through

Eugene

Roseburg

Wolf Creek

napping at every rest area, one sound

chuckawalla

remnant in my mind that meant whatever and fueled me on

somehow, I would have liked to avoid the ocean but out of

Crescent City

wound up at it again, even

Eureka

in a blink of sun lay

subfusc

fulvous

umber

turd-heavy, logged in sound of autumn wordage

same Humboldt Bay or not

you knew in light hippie time

would wing in on wine from the city

the redwood the driftwood are you

pleurisy I think

I told the interviewer, warm cute woman who wanted to sign

me on had to do

background check

which meant a wait, I drowsed in Samoan motel at edge of

downtown Eureka, to walk I would have had to breathe, an

effort sitting, would I die of apnea, did quick intakes awake

to train the mind for sleep, the Samoan had failed to get my

credit card to work would retry in the morning, man with a

badge came in dream, advised me to leave that I would not

have to pay

nothing will happen

he or it or I was right, I drove away from the thick air

of a place in which it was too late to start all over

again, en route to

chuckawalla

an inland journey via known

Ukiah

Colusa

traffic jam in Sacramento

Valley not a town in sight

one more hour lost or gained to you

a rice field waiting out the rain

highway

ninety-nine

through

Modesto

Tulare

the

Tehachapi

wind-ranch

summit

with daybreak into Mojave the Mojave,

the cold hand on my chest was lightening now

Barstow

Needles

eye-forty

ninety-five

Lake Havasu

I managed to erect my tent in air that had dry warm in it, a

park on the dammed water north edge of the yangland, was

glad to have come to

place of the little spring

Arizona

one more bytime, midevening a woman’s angry drunken wail at

the next campsite but two

they say I’m fat

can’t get a man

why are you here

I went on south along the Colorado, a haze in the head,

toward Parker, did not like idea of a dam but liked the dam

itself now with

heightened security

under armed watch, ignored my

white-legs

symptom to walk around on it, to

Blythe California

a nondead desert town where I woke in motel room knowing I

had come to the end of one road not that a

Chuckwalla mountain

range lay to the west, had precognition been at some dim work

in me, rented an aging

mobile home

hidden in oleander on the

Ehrenberg Arizona

Mount Honor

Honor Hill

side and got half a job at rest area twenty minutes out of

Blythe on the

eye-ten

El-Ay–Phoenix run, the petty cleaning maintaining not hard

to do

in uninhabited desert

you can breathe anyway

wait and what has been harrying you

will have to stop and wait as well

I could haul and heave, broom sand off paving shovel a

gutter, no hurry, a quick walk though in rich dry lowland

air would hit the respiration make me cut to an amble, I was

reading

Jorge Semprun

and on a

quel beau dimanche

would hike willy-nilly in the man-trashed

Dome Rock

mountains at Ehrenberg or weekday north out of rest area,

early to work to have time, flat trail that led to big rock

house, had no roof no litter an odd graffito

hail you brah

look south to two-way unending semi parade

eye-ten

beyond it the

Little Chuckwalla

range, name on the wild, man did not live there, here, did

if anyone called it living at

Ironwood

Chuckawalla Valley

prisons that lay adjoined at mountain foot, were a note of

distant quiet turmoil that lit up the evening as I turned home,

ten thousand men, no wonder Ironwood needed a psych tech,

my application would have to go to Sacramento, a wait, come

puritan day

I drove to geoglyphic site on the Colorado

what aeronaut did they mean to

please or appease who drew huge

animal men and a serpentine

what can you read in an earth writ

the intaglios gave me a touch of

déjà vécu

as of having been in on their view taken part in the work,

all which seemed to have had to do with paradigmatic life

of an antient Mojave

Buddha

Jesus

Mohammed

that in getting word or mark of it out they were trying to

imitate, at that moment I wanted to contribute to join, did

not sense

déjà vu

if you have already lived what

you are living now you must

not have taken a wrong turn at the

corner of ocean and desert

when

el norte

gusted I knew how to find every hole my trailer had in it,

I put down the

Private World

Unamuno

not quite knowing what he had meant by

God

drove to

Cíbola

refuge and looked at geese a hawk a dark mammal that fled

into tule as wind changed to south and the sun came back

post hoc ergo propter hoc

not that making nature my

object of belief

to quote

Santayana

would save it or anyone, I went to

Palm Canyon

turnoff at the

Kofa

too but did not drive in, no road for a low Crown Vic, would

see it in time I thought, next to

eye-ten

bridge an

arcade of Lombardy poplar

in rusted leaf that you walk

through to edge of the Colorado

its movement all narrowed wintry

the

desert winos motel

on one way into Blythe might have attracted my patronage of

yore, handyman must not have had a dee who knew, any truth

of it blown in the wine, was

Judy’s Turn to Cry

a onetime kid voice sang in triumph on radio, I could get

only one station an ay-em but heard En-Pee-Ar again during

short trip to Yuma via

Ogilby Road

that went over spine of the naked

Chocolate

range in noonlight so lovely it hurt, heart town of the yangland

jammed with exmas now a Yuma I would ever mind had been

a home to me, one day

la migra

came to rest area were hunting

un pollo

had I seen him

he has a water jug, we think he’s headed to the

McCoys

a winter night in Mojave

would not kill a man but you

have needed

el agua

can get it

at enemy truck oasis

I had not but would keep an eye on salt-cedar thicket I told

them, not on rock house along the track to

McCoy

high hard haven, I might be having a government punitive

job myself, had made the

eligibility list

heard not yet a thing from Ironwood, friendly woman dentist

who worked there talked to me at rest area, wanted to

give them a nudge

and I was called to interview but would have to take a

physical, did not smoke anymore, seemed on mend unlike old

friend

Walter Spalding

un guitarrista

I had met in Mexico during hip antiquity who had toured

Europe with an own trio, done recital at

Carnegie

now dead of pulmonary obstruction, my age, I wrote him a

tribute that waned to rhyme

clitter of leaf in

castanet tree

near the town of

Malgré Lui

I could hike at speed but would have an asthmatoid fit while

reading on occasion, with dwindle of money I went to a diet of

popcorn and burrito did not scrimp however to fill the gas

tank meet a friend in

Gibraltar Mountain Wilderness

or shy at a trail that went up, the day some cloud all wind

unimaginable weather-

sky that had to mean a rain

but on the highway you got no more

than a flick of aspergillum

did you know that in North America

someone wrote

geoglyphs are found only in the lower Colorado

valley

I wrote to another, Rima the bird woman I had seen ninety-eight

ninety-nine, Kingman Yuma, who had moved to a job in

yinland

Bemidji Minnesota

we had trekked in

Itasca

there, fallen out I did not know why, wanted to say my

regret, the email

bounced

never a golden boy am a silvern one now

I put in log but mesquite and greasewood were waking to

midmarch

palo verde have come to bloom

yellow the oleander

a variegation hot enough

to put a hole in your curtain

toward noon the trailer would heat up like a tin box in

the residential garden parking lot, what would I have to pay

to cool it in May, not a worry if I got the Ironwood job which

would threaten my lack of means

told of a link between Swedish

frugality and Swedish

memory

enkelhet

och mine

å what could you do but say jo

in off time I would park under derelict tin ramada on the

country route into Blythe, walk a mile to the sham coolth

of library, returning stop at riverside to hike by an agriditch,

Clare on his rounds

to quote

John Ashbery

the cold-water tap in immobile home was issuing warm when

I did the interview at Ironwood, head shrink an antique

musing gentleman would hire me if tee-bee test, no pee-ee

needed, came negative, it did and I went unafraid to work in

giant hermitage that sat nowhere on road to

Wiley’s Well

what awed me were

palms too tall too uniform in

trim that wait along the side

of the way are not meaning welcome

but to march you to no return

the ethnic-gangland air of fear and jive within moved not

at all, tattoo on every shaven head, many a male

cee-oh’s

no exception, in

ad seg

administrative segregation

where I did my own brief time I watched a Mexican

cuadrilla

at callisthenic chant in exercise pen, fit loud youth

supple and turbulent

motivated to what good purpose, Taliban without gawd, I

might have idled on made money to no good purpose had I not

known the book already how it ended, would not have gotten

hurt at Ironwood, any locked mad unit worse, but I did not

want to put me through the heat had a mind to the yinland

and avoided the lady dentist the palms’ look on my walkout

day, took off to

a North Dakota of any

time that you wanted to write

and live in

enkelhet

och mine

with dreams of a yangland bytime

Glossary

one

jäg tanker . . . I think I shall go out on a long trip,

It may be awhile before we meet again.

sykehus, sjukhus hospital

y no volveráááá and won’t return

vestíbulo vestibule

de la tela of the web

tela mundial world web

jag har ordnat . . . I have planned the trip in some great detail,

I have prepared everything but the exact itinerary.

(Hjalmar Gullberg, ibid.)

yo lo leí . . . I read it in the Book of Mormon.

kremasjon cremation

y más allá and farther away

peluquería barber shop

bienvenido lechugueros welcome lettuce pickers

pescador fisherman

y no vuelvennnn and do not return

two

Algodones name of dunes west of Yuma

cárcel prison

tarjeta postcard

odi et amo I love, and I hate. (Catullus)

tänk på svenska think of/in Swedish

three

magnificent brumal from “Ah . . . To the Villages”

un milagro a miracle

den resignierten Glanz the resigned splendor

jardín garden

förfluten tid past time

och mysterium and mystery

Järnboås poet’s ancestral village in Swedish mining district

Magen David star of David

genealogi genealogy

hem home

la frontera the border

Four

quel beau dimanche what a nice Sunday

déjà vécu already lived

el norte the north wind

pot hoc ergo propter hoc after which, therefore because of which

Judy’s Turn to Cry “Judy’s Turn to Cry”

“Ruby” Ross)

la migra the border patrol

un pollo a “chicken”—illegal immigrant

McCoys a range north of rest area

el agua the water

un guitarrista a guitar player

Malgré Lui “In Spite of Himself”—imaginary toponym

Itasca state park in Minnesota

enkelhet simplicity, e.g., a peasant’s material way of life

minne memory

cee-oh’s correctional officer’s

cuadrilla team, gang

supple and turbulent from “Sunday Morning”

by Holly Stevens)