Once

       there was smoke coiling the sky, dust and rubbish   windblown in an alley, a light rain beginning to fall,   once a black Cadillac rusted in a field of milkweed,   October snow come down over Lake Huron,   once a young man disappeared and was found   days later a hundred and fifty miles away alone   weeping near the railroad tracks in Carey, Ohio,   those thoughts, those days, consciousness expended   determining the value of wage labor, the long-eared owl   in the red...