Errol Miller

This side of Chicago
                                a beginning
and an ending,
                      naturalism,
cars cranking, dogs barking, Milday
has gone to get the mail & I am developing
my own plot in an alluvial flood-zone
on the banks of the Ouachita.
But here there is
no light.
            Self-sufficiency,
coming with a price, prolonged periods
                                of no evolution
                                where
white-oak roots multiply
and the conscious mind's on strike,
where I am going through an armchair stage
of loneliness defined by clever writing:
the efficient use of props,
marigolds and other
doctrines,
                whose art is it,
                anyway,
whose romantic
speculation,
                  stained-glass & ceramics
                  & manifold parts & pieces
                  of a greater whole
where the hero & the heroine
part in such sweet sorrow: but
not this time, not in this
renovated marriage
as robust
                as any fine fat hog
                            from
the slaughterhouses
of rural Dixie.