Washita. Patrick Lane T.

      EARLY PROMISES

      The blue just before blue, dawn, the hard shade that promises

      nothing, an old knife tempered wrong in tired coals,

      the blacksmith drunk and weeping in the bar, the horses gone.

      You watch the woman with the canvas coat,

      the one who gathers bottles from the blue boxes tilted on the curb.

      She knows the answers, but she’s not telling anyone.

      It’s a wrong time to be awake and you don’t yearn for the bed

      you didn’t have in the night, the girl who left you in that bar years ago.

      The pool table lights turned her blonde hair blue, shadows

      that lived no longer than the moment you touched them.

      You wonder sometimes about the girl but she’s gone into the bruised lands.

      Coming out of the night is harder than you think.

      You walk blind into morning thinking of a tongue on glass, the moon.

      ELI, ELI

      The quail in the garden eat the fallen sunflower seeds.

      Terrible and sweet, the beauty in this world,

      as the prayer I made in childhood: Eli, Eli,

       save my father in the war.