A Man Called After Dark

the smoke of belt burn / and nectarines and me / — I will learn to love him

A Man Called After Dark

I.

He crosses night —
a green of wild antenna
fireweed and shadscale

calling me through
television static
his name is After Dark

he calls to me
with the sounds
of wet alligator juniper

tells me my name
with the beak break of a crow
cocking its head to the south

the dirt beneath has teeth
long leadplant and saltbush
circuits of root and stem
gnarled from the mouth

II.

the man has mercury
in his name — his head sky thick
not yet cloud or rain

his skull is a shelf
for white candles
an unlocked gun box

a half full fifth of dark matter
a late evening gnat sung
sweet as dark soil and wolftail

his frame mountaintops
the meadow sleepgrass
as he carries into his pit

the smoke of belt burn
and nectarines and me
— I will learn to love him

so erosive it eats
through canyons
like pink water

III.

the field stands taller
when he turns key to engine —
he tells me he dances

too many sorrows
out the open windows
of train cars in temples

jackrabbits ash field mottle
at the hem sown
with a sunken backroad

of flesh and hillslope —
he drives off
dusts the horizon

as if chancel
as if sunrise
as if all of it
— all its beauty