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Beating Heart, Dancing Feet

Driving Home From Work in an Inexpensive But Very Satisfactory Foreign-Made Car with My Young Daughters Drifting Near Sleep in the Backseat and My Mind Awash in a Failed Computer Run That Had Occupied the Greater Part of an Otherwise Inarticulate and Surely Unmemorable Day


There was a ranch which was quite regular and neat
yet smart-looking in the right season and with
the occasional special light could seem especially
compelling as it now found itself straddling
the new state highway just after it left town
and into the suddenly rural landscape as dusk grew.
The time-change was still dissimilar and a weak front
was spread above the lower foothills:  two events
that I found pertinent as I passed through
this suddenly renewed but very familiar place.
And woefully I thought:  how soon will a change
come to remove this unrepeatable beauty
that I knew would dissolve as soon as the sun
fell below the Coast range.  There were headlights
rising above the contours, heading into town
in a procession as natural and correct as any
sunset or weakened front, and the state highway
carried this burden as wearily and as well
as you carry yours or as I sometimes carry mine.
There was a ranch with two pastures that straddled
the improved state highway just after it left town
as my daughters slept in the backseat of a fine small car.



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Collected Poetry

Beating Heart, Dancing Feet

Driving Home From Work in an Inexpensive But Very Satisfactory Foreign-Made Car with My Young Daughters Drifting Near Sleep in the Backseat and My Mind Awash in a Failed Computer Run That Had Occupied the Greater Part of an Otherwise Inarticulate and Surely Unmemorable Day