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Swimming the English Channel, struggling to make it to Calais, I swam into Laura halfway across. My body oiled for warmth, black rubber cap on my head, eyes hidden behind goggles, I was exhausted, ready to drown, when I saw her coming toward me, bobbing up and down between waves, effortlessly doing a breaststroke, headed for Dover. Treading water, I asked in French if she spoke English, and she said, “Yes, I’m an American.” I said, “Hey, me too,” then asked her out for coffee.

How do you, Asks the chief of police, Patrol a city Where the butcher shops Are guarded by vultures; Where bulls get pregnant, Cows are barren, And calves give milk Three times a day; Where mice are boatmen And tomcats the boats They row; Where frogs keep snakes As watchdogs, And jackals Go after lions? Does anyone know What I’m talking about? Says Kabir.

In Indianapolis they drive five hundred miles and end up where they started: survival of the fittest. In the swamps of Auburn and Elkhart, in the jungles of South Bend, one-cylinder chain-driven runabouts fall to air-cooled V-4’s, a-speed gearboxes, 16-horse flat-twin midships engines— carcasses left behind by monobloc motors, electric starters, 3-speed gears, six cylinders, 2-chain drive, overhead cams, supercharged to 88 miles an hour in second gear, the age of Leviathan ... There is grandeur in this view of life, as endless forms most beautiful and wonderful are being evolved.

I was hauling freight out of the Carolinas up to the Cumberland Plateau when, in Tennessee, I saw from the freeway, at 2 am a house ablaze. Water from the firehoses arced into luminescent rainbows. The only sound, the dull roar of my truck passing.  I found myself strangely happy. It was misfortune on that cold night falling on someone’s house, but not mine not mine.

What song will they play if I don’t come home tonight? I wished someone would write a song for me, then someone did but it was a song berating me; it was called “Actually, Ashleigh” and I think of the cruelty of songwriters as I get ready — how their music makes their words sound better than they really are how our feelings make music seem better than it really is and how the difficulty of getting ready is a pure, bitter difficulty like calculus. In the back row a once-promising student cries. What will my face become? Strings of demi-semi quavers. I partition the day into a wall of smaller more manageable days, each of which goes black as I billow past in my bike pants and cleats and I see I am not getting ready at all; if anything I am getting unready, I am trying to be made lovely by the glow of an Adshel in the rain. In youth we are told we will rise up whole from our baths, from the comforting midwinter soup of our sadness. We will not devour ourselves tonight. The dark broth will always drain from us. Our legs will drain from our bodies and into the ground and our footsteps will pour into the future. But the future is hidden under thick nests of fat beneath the streets. It pours out to sea, gently warming the earth and its creatures. I go down there as I get ready and the air turns over, gently exposing its soft underbelly. My going-out clothes are waiting for me ironed smooth, laid out like a disappearance.

I spied everything. The North Dakota license, the “Baby on Board” signs, dead raccoons, and deer carcasses. The Garfields clinging to car windows—the musky traces of old coffee. I was single-minded in the buzz saw tour I took through the flatlands of the country to get home. I just wanted to get there. Never mind the antecedent. I had lost stations miles ago and was living on cassettes and caffeine. Ahead, brushstrokes of smoke from annual fires. Only ahead to the last days of summer and to the dying theme of youth. How pitch-perfect the tire-on-shoulder sound was to mask the hiss of the tape deck ribbons. Everything. Perfect. As Wyoming collapses over the car like a wave. And then another mile marker. Another. How can I say this more clearly? It was like opening a heavy book, letting the pages feather themselves and finding a dried flower.

Calláte. Don’t say it out loud: the color of his hair, the sour odor of his skin, the way they say his stomach rose when he slept. I have done nothing, said nothing. I piss in the corner of the room, the outhouse is far, I think orange blossoms call me to eat them. I fling rocks at bats hanging midway up almond trees. I’ve skinned lizards. I’ve been bored. It’s like that time I told my friend Luz to rub her lice against my hair. I wanted to wear a plastic bag, to smell of gasoline, to shave my hair, to feel something like his hands on my head. When I clutch pillows, I think of him. If he sleeps facedown like I do. If he can tie strings to the backs of dragonflies. I’ve heard of how I used to run to him. His hair still smelling of fish, gasoline, and seaweed. It’s how I learned to walk they say. Calláte. If I step out this door, I want to know nothing will take me. Not the van he ran to. Not the man he paid to take him. Mamá Pati was asleep when he left. People say somehow I walked across our cornfield at dawn, a few steps behind. I must have seen him get in that van. I was two. I sat behind a ceiba tree, waiting. No one could find me.

My mother says it’s childish and my father says it’s dumb— whenever they discover that I’m sucking on my thumb. It’s such a silly thing to do, as everybody knows. So now instead of sucking it I stick it in my nose.

I turn over A new museum leaf The light is new And right on the spot I was just thinking about A fleet is about to set out On the ocean light Water turns to sky And makes the eye Blend ingredients in a bend Shaped like an ear A new speaker is speaking I hear the words They sound along The halls of the balls I turn to find them As if I knew where to turn Isn't that the sound That's present Isn't that the sound That's gifted Isn't that something I'd like to put upon The walls And take down Take apart And put in a mood The instructions to which I say aloud

How is it that the snow amplifies the silence, slathers the black bark on limbs, heaps along the brush rows? Some deer have stood on their hind legs to pull the berries down. Now they are ghosts along the path, snow flecked with red wine stains. This silence in the timbers. A woodpecker on one of the trees taps out its story, stopping now and then in the lapse of one white moment into another.