Read by Gary L. McDowell
[lineate]For you I drink a cup of wind, taste two fingers of salt.[/lineate]
[lineate]For you I do not bathe & grease builds back of my ears & tangles my lank hair, the vagabond whiskers on my nose.[/lineate]
[lineate]For you pine duff, blueberry, wild mint, a fawn’s slender hoof & fetlock.[/lineate]
[lineate]For you I chew weeds & rain-rotten sticks, drag my bare feet through dew-soaked grass.[/lineate]
[lineate]For you I refuse the advances of the mountain.[/lineate]
[lineate]For you I curse & stomp rocks, each thwomp & ring winging up shin & spine, rattling the very jaw socket.[/lineate]
[lineate]For you I wander open-mouthed under the cloud-shot sky & do not watch where it is I am going & with a wet pop turn my ankle & fall & scrape my hands & knees to the wet quick.[/lineate]
[lineate]For you stump & limp.[/lineate]
[lineate]For you abrasion, bruised bone, little driblets of blood.[/lineate]
[lineate]For you six days of sun & seven days of silence, warm water from a tin cup.[/lineate]
[lineate]For you I wander out again & step through a scruffy slope of meadow, the lewd unfurling of ferns, dewy & vaginal field of purple-flowered moss, & on down to the lake, lilies like scoops of butter corking on the wind-cut water.[/lineate]
[lineate]At moonset I wake & rise & piss a great arc out the front door & leap from the steps, & up the hill I run, the lean god of absence gnashing my devotion, & a fishbelly wind scours my skin & my eyes leak light & my sick heart judders in its pocket of gristle & rib, & each winging rib & each slick joint & juddering leg bone for you, for you this road & road dust & lip salt & the salt-hungry tongue, & this breath & this breath & breath.[/lineate]