There were more rebel flags and gun shops 
in Indy than Virginia, fewer mountains, 
less green for our eyes, and our cat 
wasn’t born there, she was born here, 
under the house, and if nothing 

is eternal, if the road-cut I walk 
exposes three hundred million years 
to sunlight and dog piss, 
if the idea of the rose of the mind 
is almost as tired as the fact 
of the rose of your garden, 
if a big chunk of Cali could be gone 
any Tuesday, if my wife 
and my love of my wife 
and my love of my love of my wife 
and Sontag writing about Cioran 
will be equally swallowed
by history, that mouth
with no end, I prefer to fix a chair

in Virginia, a little glue 
where the leg has come loose, and leave it out 
at the edge of the Roanoke River 
for my neighbor to sit in 
and nurse her baby, to see them,
two chapters of hunger, from our house, 
through the window that’s given me horses 
and hawks and cedars and poems, a window 

I’ll take with me when I die 

if my will has its way, everyone 

should be buried with a window, everyone 

should fix a chair and place it 
where it will be of the most use, in this life 
and not the next, this life 
with its clapping if you’re behind me, 
if you’re beside me, if you’re with me, 
if you’re listening