My mouth balloons with silence, as I catch myself again pouring all the raw material for words instead into the act of hunting, or of longing for the hunt. I size up men and women like gently dappled deer, glimpsed in the roadside forests of my childhood. My heart’s teeth are glistening and pointed.

I suddenly remember with massive force the afternoon light on the Natchez Trace, and every curve my life has taken from it. Lately I feel I am scrambling in a foolish effort to find the right pieces; if I could only find the right town, the right girl, the right man, the right way to pay the bills, the right old American car, the right haircut, the right arrangement of the furniture, the right artistic practice, then, then, all the beauty that I see in fits and patches would unleash itself to me at all times without this constant ache. 

I know, I know.

I dreamt last night I was falling slowly from the lighting rig of a stage–the sinister man behind the security cameras had it out for us, setting grids to tilt and lights to blind–but somehow descended gracefully to the floor, frightened and for some reason embarrassed, but utterly unharmed. 

And here I keep drawing the Queen of Wands–upright, then reversed, then reversed again, and over and over she makes her appearance, turning this way and that–and the better women that I could be flicker before my eyes each morning. 

I want, I want, I want the mystery and its uncovering and for the mystery to somehow still remain. This is all we want. A constant cliffhanger with kind eyes, staring at you from across the bridge.