IN THE EVENT OF NOT HAVING AN ANSWER

@ Powderhorn Park, for my daughters

Elisabeth Workman

Because it doesn’t belong to anyone
Was the first incomplete reason.

To be so nettled, so boneset, so
Venus green spiral slime and snarl skull

So much the reversal of a wound
And wounded wondered rumored.

There were coyotes on the island they said
Where in wind a star landed and married earth

As a call to decompose
Old systems rooted in control and patrol.

Do you mean petrol? At the end
What remains? You must know

A tree or a lake or a little rock
No news no debt no lack no country.

What else is possible? On the west edge of the lake
We found what you called the night horse trail. They know.

And the old cottonwood on the hill who knows us
From above and below, is inspirited is filled you said

With clouds it grows at night and disperses as spring
Snow in the morning across the lake’s silver skin.

In the event of not having an answer there were
Cormorants drying their wings like goth lords.

There was a beekeeper in the Y-shaped tree
Playing a very long note on a mortal violin.

Then there was the boy who lost his class who asked
Do you know the feeling of being forgotten?

The clouds and the night horses must know
How they come out after sundown

Like see-through explosions
Through vespertine curtains

A celestial body a horse’s eye
A plastic gem dropped in the dirt.

In the event of not having an answer, there
Was the evidence the way a mouth can be a fissure

In the surface of the seen
Through which the unseen might sound