That Field

There are few Squirrels left
In my memory,
Running up dust clouds
In that dry field,
We walked through
The tall green grass
In summer,
Followed the winters
Swiping of tumble weed,
My Uncles dreams,
Gliding away
From him Like love,
My brothers,
Four brown salamanders
On the ditch bank,
BB guns and fleeing
Towards the reservoir,
Barefoot and Jesus,
With a clean beard
And a woman’s sigh

These were the days
My mother kept,
Her Church calendar
Crooked on the wall,
Her flour tortilla legs,
My father’s lust,
Her milk we
Walked away from,
My Grandmother,
Lost in her memory
Of children,
Her black n white husband,
Photos like skin,
Voices, she never said
She heard

This is where the door opens,
To fat clouds and blue
Watercolor wash,
And I spin my top
On the kitchen table,
With open turkey cans,
Welfare spam,
Our neighbor, red lipstick
On puffed brown lips
Yawing on a chair,
The derelict dog
With a noose rope collar,
The red, white and blue,
Behind the mud face
Of Kennedy
On that TJ rug hanging

I imagined myself,
A man who lives
Far from this home,
I imagined
What would become,
my longing,
To pencil leg trot,
With a full blown God
In my eyes,
The Paper-Mache
Angels in grade school
And golden staircases
In my mother’s bible,
My blank cum,
I thought I sinned

That this boy should
Live an eternity,
Always returning,
To long black hair,
The body
Of a praying mantis,
To follow the same
Ditch bank
I went home with bow
And arrow,
To sheets like white
Ghosts in the wind,
My sisters, tucking rabbits
In a basket

That all of this,
Never ended,
And I can walk with myself,
In this time
And in a time past,
A time that never
Goes completely,
And my mother,
In her flower print dress,
Will always be
Calling us in from that field;
That field that died
And returned every year

And I? I go guilty
Of saving dreams,
And looking for traces
Of myself,
Like reaching for silk.