I am tucked deep
between long slender silos, the earth
so wet I had to keep
to gravel paths and I am standing
at the crossroad of old stage
road and san angelo
where the leaveless vines hang brown
and waiting, among the cloudy black
music of crickets, the sky
thick with coming
spring through bare branches. My arms
hooked back over a fence,
I am looking for the moon I heard
was going to be
full tonight, but droplets clinging
to the underside of this rung of fence
glint under the no-moon,
water like spittle on
a chin. I’m wiping it away
as if you’ve been
born—I know the swelled white
moon is behind the clouds
but we haven’t met
face to face and anyway this night
is no time for it—I should be
packing for a day’s drive
North to a man I’ll never
marry, and here in the gravel
pounded to dust
with no job and an unfixed meaning
for the word home,
I don’t trust myself enough.
But will we ever
be more beautiful together? Me
repeating, I’m not looking for you,
while your face glows through the white
curtains of your hiding place.