Hustle

The dark peoples with things:

for keys, coins, pencils
and pens our pockets grieve.

No street lights or signs,
no liquor stores or bars,
only a lighter for a flashlight,

and the same-faced trees,
similar-armed stones
and crooked bushes
staring back at me.

There is no path in the woods for a boy from the city.

I would have set fire to get off this wilderness
but Palomar is no El Camino in an empty lot,

the plastic dripping from the dash
and the paint bubbling like a toad's throat.

If mountains were old pieces of furniture,
I would have lit the fabric and danced.

If mountains were abandoned crack houses,
I would have opened their meanings with flame,

if that would have let the wind and trees lead my eyes
or shown me the moon's tiptoe on the moss—