BRINGING IT BACK HOME

(for Tom)

Helpless (peace, Neil Young)
like a feather in the air
suffers the downdrafts
migrating from one idea
to the next spot on the map

of the unconscious,
what it means to be alive
escapes down the warp
in the carpet's pattern, turns
up on the side of the road

to Xochicalco--
ruins of Place of Flowers--
where in the court one
ball hangs suspended, never
falls nor reaches the stone ring.

If I could only
count the stones that are missing
from the buildings here,
put them all back together,
I would take it all back home

to that mythical
place in the Universe where
we must have started
as random thoughts one boring
Saturday afternoon, then

proceeded to drift
over the continents like
an accident waits--
ready to create road kill--
plunges into the abyss.