I.

It will come back,

come down the street on one leg & a wooden peg.

Nearing Jacksonville the soil is drier,

grassy fields with a slight roll.

The fields already plowed, dead brown leaves

thick and shining in the sun.

A white woman will wait on a Negro man in a dept. store.

I bleed occasionally.

Annie's tired.

The evening sun in our eyes as we walk back.

I love you. You are the true friend of my heart.

And through it all feeling as goofy as he.

Neat. Clean. Dialectical.

But the flux is a real flu--is it psychic or physical?

Pull your shoulder blades together

& await the return of picket lines.

III.

He writes down notes that bear upon the case.

The trunkful of documents.

The terraced garden--the tall pine woods beyond;

he seemed brilliant and "right" to his balanced wife.

Porkface cusses the waiter,

grabs bread from Greyhair's plate.

On a ramshackle porch in Georgia, a gaunt woman in a red robe

combing out her beautiful long hair.

Can't, can't, can't, can't.

Like hammerblows. Each incapacity equally important.

Miss Vaughn loves humanity:

When they passed away I decided to move to the hotel.

Very few human beings are handsome, one finds this out

on trams and buses.

I feel all dust.

And from the moment I hit town--dear God--the same blue funk.

V.

She moved easily, red skirt, pink blouse, shining white earrings.

He gave her a dollar.

In the gargoyle plaster hotels

30,000 soldier boys all far from home.

I have a set made every six months.

See the change in the human face.

Nature abhors a vacuum:

I was empty space in a cohesive mass.

Woke up each morning,

chest stuck full of hard fragments.

It's the end I'm unsure about. Watching pelicans

skim Miami Bay--the intense blue water--their heavy grace.

A lake, framed by great pines;

Spanish moss; the song of birds; sun.

Something happens but you don't do it.

The final resistance is Mother Earth.