Every night it's the same

The warehouses
pour out their own
at five o'clock.
They cross train tracks
with smoke plumes coming
out of cracked windows.
Radios syncronize
for a short while
as the weight of daytime
lifts and shoulders lift
and the eyes get focus
on everything but the herons
perched on the riverbed waiting
for the quiet to start.

The Prize

What will we do tonight
on the edge of the cracked shrub-steppe?
We can go around green mounds,
in between them are canyons,
we'll lay bare our options to the unfolding
storm clouds.

The river was invited across baslt layers,
each one pushing until it couldn't.
Land waits.
No one I know cares to push their feet in to
the mix of sagebrush and grasses like I do.

You know it's not ending
in the stilted shadows across
great plains, and you know it
won't end in the desert-cold nights.
The farm lands have all faded in to
the deepest of memories and I'm
left with a lantern to fade with
the dusk.

Milton-Freewater

Every tiny moment
increased until it was
a real day.
The foreign sounds,
the backwards trails,
the pack of trees standing guard
on the edge of untouched forest life.

Black ink trails
lay through the state
vein-like and I can't
find a map to save my goddamn life.

Everyday we'll get off this
Greyhound racing dog
only to find ourselves in places
like Arco and Hermiston.
I could have stayed on and
slept through the leg-stretch
opportunity, but I never do.
I'm interested in how the air
here is like breath on glass.

Could it be
that I only see
a burning moon and stars,
illuminating cars
for the people who never sleep?