Footpath

for Carra Stratton

A strip of land of ponds, of gardens, of vines, of stones and 

wood, bottle glass, chicken bones, deep weeds that are not 

weeds that will not die, J looks up w/a small knife in his hands, 

a bouquet of greens, a strip of land from tall graves on the small 

hill in the middle of the city, sloping down through buses & 

wear, spiring incisors of concrete, a little strip of land tumbling 

with water through the flickering projects the midnight blush 

on film from bulbs, sprays of light, a strip of land that is the 

lakeshore’s cold water as it deepens into deeper

marine matrices, a little strip of land sweated, mapped, laughed 

and stamped through and meandering by J and I and WC and 

CQ, you and GD, who else, that runs even so invisibly, even in 

a timeline that is the underside of this: from the centers of 

catastrophic exchange sprinting through the assembly line of 

suburbs, under the great tarp of industrial farms

a strip of travel by mice and voles and bluejays, centipedes and 

crows, coyotes, leaping deer and salamanders oozing 

transformation under wet skies of rock, a strip of land, 

unwinding tape that can’t be wholly owned, only 

used in part or betrayed, totally, a radiation 

of strips from and to what isn’t Buffalo, along 

a water finding water, rise of ponds, of gardens, of vines, of 

stones and wood, J looks up with his harvest knife & I smile 

but the air is purple, deep purple, maroon swallowing