This is what happens, Larry. This is what happens . . . . ——-) [turned page] Prairie nocturne

Joel and Ethan for the next two months, eager to continue to revisit the goods and see what has staying power, what surprises, and what basks best in the light of the first look. In the meantime, in the land of vertiginous texts:

*****

Trips to deserts and mountains lay bare

The minimalist slippage of the plains

When the snow is here.

In winter any farmhouse or naked strand

Of naked trees isn’t so much desolate as

Unfinished. Reading Hugo and degrees of gray

Doesn’t cut the ketchup. It’s either

the intimate, insulated hush when the wind

Is out of breath, or it’s the moaning

And keening and prostrating when it

Is at full ecstatic hostility and

Compounds its interest on having so much to say

With this broad, sparse, and saddle-sore canvas

To spread across itself and

To spread itself across.