WALKING THROUGH DRUID CITY

You drift, a replica riverboat,

through gray fogs of mosquito

 

abatement into the chamber

of commerce, a drunk horse-

riding seminar flier flapping

to your feet like a toy dog,

 

and then another, an offer,

says will cover in bluegrass.

 

Christmas cats Easter-egg

in the bushes, find their way

back home like amnesiacs.

 

The hurricane condos crouch

like circus elephants, all fours.

By the lumberyard, trans-fat

speakeasies wear new soot,

charcoaled by passing trains.

 

As toilet water threads down

the library steps, the humidity

thick as diphthong, you rest,

pitching a tent on the quad.

 

On weekends, they vibrated,

the theme songs, the good

mornings of lawnmowers,

fingers doorbelling the dust.

 

In the stadium, they all ring

Like roaches in a drinking jar.

 

WALKING THROUGH ORADOUR-SUR-GLANE

You cannot spend much

time here, passing through

doors into morning, what

remains like unstruck set,

 

yet everything was struck—

lightning had motive once,

 

came to create rubble, rust,

stuttering rounds in the barn

making men lame—a pain

 

shocks into you, sympathy,

stigma—and all the bursting:

 

flames from the church doors,

ammunition for the runners.

 

It’s loud with valedictories;

 

what can echo does. How

each tree always reaches up.