Edward Dorn

[one of Edward Dorn's "Twenty-four Love Songs" from Way Out West, Penguin, 2007]

23

And then, if you come
to the mountains, what
is there more, ore in mines
ore in veins, or more fully than
you might have had it elsewhere.
Call them the Rockie mountains.
They aren't yours and
you never thought they were because
you lived in them too sometime,
someplace ago and know better.
There is a vast smell of marriage
not lightly said, some place
some time ago I was there too.
I've been everywhere.
This afternoon I thought why not,
why not get Jenny into something
and we both fly off to meet,
well, almost anyone. Away
from the flat rancorous smell
of their insinuation, which is
just this: you've done the thing —
you've presumed your body
as well as your mind, your mind
we like to watch go through its sideshow
lifted up in the bright creative air
but when you made other arrangements
for your body, baby go away, that's it


[excerpt from Dorn's Gunslinger]