Kicking A Can

He walked out and kept walking

Past the fat houses that litter the valley

The flowers of summer almost gone

The puffy clouds pulled apart as if by buzzards.



At nightfall, far from town,

He came to bus stop

But no buses ran till morning

And so he kept walking

Through a shadowy valley

A litter of skunks scurried along the hem of a forest.



It was a bank holiday

And the sun awakened the world

When he returned weeks later

With a fist of mountain flowers.



They asked him where he had gone and why

But he had no answer.

Do birds decide to build nests.

He thought alone to himself.



It rained all the following week

And he sat at the kitchen window

Listening to the mice in the walls

And drinking coffee.

He imagined himself, among other things,

As a goose clapping in the thunder-charged air.