looking for the horizon

spilling the disaster
across the years you once
called my number when
you needed my memory and
now my daughter does that
now and again plucking
the data from a life once
disfigured by my own self
pity still I have to wonder
where you are tonight in
asia or down the american
south your mother in atlanta
your lover in the magic
kingdom and I am here
listening to that last
message thick with inter-
ference on the answering
machine I called you back
and left my own digression
words felt useless now the
years gathering the remains
of my health and destroying
the dreams of security this
lands ability to come back
from its essential tragedy

so I listened to Frost
on the car stereo yesterday
& I thought about you again
somewhere in the universe
cracking wise helping
someone find the way

did I ever know the way
smoke rests on the fortress
hill the wooden stockade
charred broken a dream
breathing less and less
the horizon closer
now