Lilacs out of the dead land

Tracking Mr. Hass has spun me right round running down anchor points tethered to the corner of each quarter section, surveying and taking the measure of his regard for what he says plainly about how having breakdowns rebuilds us.

Also

each emblem of the past’s voice carries out past the last trough of a new ascending wave in which he embalms present sense without verging to the vulgar tongue,

and there is a flat but homespun accent to the truth that we lost in great haste, this brazen hurry against which our rough-hewn ruins are shorn of that pedantic metallic sheen.

but wait

until that next wave’s apex breaks and wipes out a plea written in the sand, as unlikely and inevitable as a ploughshare turning earth over dead stalks and wresting green buds from three helpings of morning light.

All so that

we may stand dazed in the cerulean stillness of almost-dawn, right-sized and equidistant from what matters, pining after California, but pegged here to the prairie, turning another page of twentieth century pleasures and waiting for the birdsong to fade.