I go loud into this shouting stone
once for the clock lost in the grass and once
until I return home. These briars in my pocket
keep spring next to my thigh. When the clouds break
to the stars, all this must go into safekeeping.

Winter leans in the sky that can only be called
that thing above us. Look at how we see it, how we
can’t raise ourselves as if we would really want to.
As if there is anything more than ground, more than
the joy of sitting together on the couch. The experiment

went well, counting the odd number of cows we stopped
next to on the highway to take photographs of landscape
and occasion, the way the road reminded us of a movie
or another photograph or conversation or dream
we shared until we recognized it before us. Red rock

shoved up from earth. Last night we made fire,
slept in the back of the car. We each remember different things
from this time, the texture of the wood or the height
of the canyon walls, what it was like to be, to be in it
on the brink of the world, our lives an exploration.