Dear Carlton,

The scrawl of your name reminds
me of the prairie; sometimes jarred peaches, but mostly
the prairie.
I see you flattening the grass.
I see you sinking into the soil.
I see you stretching your hand into the gut of the sky,
as if the earth owed something to you.

I see these things though it is not in the prairie
where you found your lasting peace.

When Lou Reid wanders on the radio,
I can’t help
but wonder if you were alone.
If you knew that the same sun that baked
that desert dry, dripped
a sunset of sweet honey through the prairie grass
half a world away.

I hope you did.


They scattered you into the sea;
little bits of you
now in the rain over the city
and frozen in the glaciers up north.

In the darkest thunderstorms, I imagine
it’s you wetting the wind, falling home
to your prairie at last.

And when it storms I dance
with my mouth wide,
hoping to catch a bit of you.

Eternally yours.