Vagrant Thoughts

Somewhere in the scratched,
crosshatched network
of lines and intersections
as vacant as Modigliani eyes,
between city days at the pool
and the quiet improbabilities of we,
beyond this instant
and that first snap of memory,
behind those eyes and stars
falling like salts toward a wound,
vagrant thoughts,
ideas without things,
come ragged out of trash can alleyways
with no apparent purpose,
direction or destination,
and quite without means they come
to pass briefly beneath a streetlight.

Yes, if I could only stop one there,
take it in and bathe it,
wash its clothes and feed it
and in the morning greet it...
but, you know,
I'd hate to lose a friend like you.

(Arkansas Magazine, Arkansas Democrat, January 18, 1987;
Photographs by Steve Ketzer, Jr., 1986)