Handing Up

I've gone pole to pole with this;

there's a hole in daddy's brain where

all the duty goes,

there's a hole in baby's brain where

simple instructions go.

Don't mind me, I'm quietly in the service

of what I assume is something - 

a neat little furrow already ploughed,

I can trundle up and down again

until it's a holloway

Hell Lane, flanked by dirt 

held up by tree roots,

bedrock worn until I can only

see as far as the next kink

on the way.

This is a path I am on,

I haven't remade my world to walk it.

One mile up in Fort Collins,

I may as well be an astronaut,

or a salmon beaten senseless 

on the deck of an Alaska boat.