Finally Grateful for the West

a poem about the eternal escape

One Hundred Days of Gratitude. Forty-seven.

Unless you really need to run the setting sun just looks like the setting sun —

a neat and tidy easy end of an amazingly American cowboy feature film (featuring perfectly tanned Italians)

Unless you are a Spanish stallion who just escaped (or is slated to get turned into glue so just has to) the plains are so flat they look fake.

No murderous manifest needed. Destiny is dead. (Thank Fate)

But when the relentless East leaves you bloody and bruised when it’s fight or flight but the only enemy insight is you, and your hands already hurt from beating yourself blue

The west becomes The West. (again and for the first time)

The dirt dries to desert all at once all in front of your eyes mountains erupt and rise grass goes green grass goes brown

an army of beasts and birds are miraculously birthed, and the earth itself extends out toward the sea.

Running away from it all. Just like me.