Sheep

for Mark

Avoiding, we drove from Chicago through Canada,

black, snow-edged highway, unlit creek trickling

to Rochester, out of school, out of traffic.

A time ago. Druggy days.

All sheep are the same, you pronounced.

Bright night, druggy day. You seemed correct.

So stupid, so sheep. No interest, without consequence.

White plasma of fur covering a continent.

Followers. So black and white. Stupid.

And then you lost your wife. No drugs now:

even counting sheep tapers off to analyzing them,

each pure shiny face keeping me from sleep:

oily sheep eyes, molded nostrils, wool

ringlets framing that passive expression,

the oily black lords of the realm of expression.

The leap quivers, the fence is not vivid. Shut eyes

pulse with broken bits of optical sludge,

dreaming less drugs too vivid a leap.

Always with the children, its own solitude,

all day you are miles from sleep,

an exhaustion that bleeds into sheets.

But, small terrors of philosophy then,

we came on absolute and fearless, unstaked in language.

Keep the good thing going. Unenforceable philosophy.