Gillian Welch

driving out of sight
into the valley
where I dream every night
and stop to wonder  
what might have happened before
all of us were but children destroyed
in our own basic conspiracies
adrift in ketchup and napkinned essence ruined in salty beer stuff
held against ourselves
and let go of into night

and the peaches warm as peaches
and our love tendered on a barstool
congratulations,
we went all over America
but sometimes we forgot what to do
and keys left us over

alright? alright.
okay, I say,
‘okay!’

move as much as necessary
lover boy loved the jukebox
and the Christmas lights over the bar,
loved the dark, beer smell of the rooms
he lived in, loved Car Wheels on a Gravel Road,
and Blood on the Tracks

he believed the anti thesis of violence was courage
from The Things They Carried
but he couldn’t stop being violent
he loved his friends
he dreamed of the day he to would fail to run to Canada

my first lover
was the pines
and the gravel in Shepard
was the wind off a mountain bike
was your face

I left home at seventeen
for university
I studied policy

until a quicksilver girl
freed me

at a party at the Dude Ranch
downstream in Oxford’s whiskey boats
I became a veteran partier
and dreamed a Southern catchall
do you remember?

we stopped at the Cash Family Home
in the little part of Arkansas
he grew up in
two flood boys

leave me alone
hold on, I’ll buy you something
like Dixie Beer
in a company of strangers
the night your best friend
tells you he’s worried about you

and you think of course not
and wonder what may have happened had you not left home
and never had a Steel Reserve
had not abandoned the bicycle boy
or Mississippi herself