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whole thing had been silver once.

      The morning after it burned we rode

      our bikes over there to watch the smoke

      uncoil and disappear. I suppose

      we were amazed by such destruction,

      how sudden it could be and how

      the shop no longer had a form.

      We figured Lonnie Belcher, a boy

      we knew from school though he was older,

      would become a hero for being close

      to all of this — his grandfather

      and a strange, unsteady uncle ran

      the shop. Lonnie had been the one

      who’d told us about Hobo Town,

      which was a few miles down the tracks

      and farther down a spur that ran

      a ways and ended in the woods.

      It was decided, then, that since

      we’d seen the blown-up shop and that

      had made us brave, we might as well

      continue on to Hobo Town.

      In single file we clattered down

      the tracks; there were three or four of us,

      our wheels rattled over the ties,

      the smell of creosote and pitch

      was thick and every little while

      we’d stop and listen to the rails

      to see if there was any singing.

      Beyond the brief freight-yard, we came

      to a shack that one time might have been

      for a switchman. We looked in the doorway and saw

      a dirty magazine that was torn

      in pieces, but a page had been hung

      on a nail in the plank wall — it was strange

      to see her there, a decoration,

      but she, the woman on the page,

      was someone’s favorite; she’d been chosen,

      her image was elevated, and now

      with sunlight on her, the altar shone.

      Faith is difficult to define,

      but most of us are willing to say

      something we don’t quite know must come before

      ourselves, something

      that isn’t our idea yet

      we hold it higher up and think

      it is the symbol of a secret.

      We found the overgrown spur

      and followed it a little distance

      until we reached a bridge over

      a stream and there we stopped. We could see

      the beginning of the woods and hills,

      and a twist of smoke from a fire rose up

      and trickled into the hot sky.

      Again we were amazed and afraid,

      though no one spoke it; but now I see

      there must be fear, there must be strange

      unsteady fear in faith. The hoboes

      were over there. Their presence, like that

      of God or lust or even grief,

      had drawn us out in wonder, but then,

      in shame, we’d trembled and turned away,

      and that, I think, is also part

      of faith, its imperfection.

NO. 9 WIRE

      I go down close, eye-blank

      to the first page of a thing, like the hank

      of wire I hung over a nail

      in the barn. I’ve twisted the origins

      of the wire and it’s likely Mister Key,

      careless and melancholy long

      before my time, it’s likely he

      is the one who left the wire, perhaps

      not long enough to hitch a gate.

      But people have their visions, don’t they?

      Where everything inside has purpose

      and nothing is cast out because

      belonging to the vision is

      the vision. I’ve seen a hive of bees

      work mountain laurel trees, I’ve seen

      them visit every blossom, and thought

      to myself, so must it be in heaven.

      The other man from the old days

      I think about, Sylvanus Shade,

      took a wild rose cane

      and bent it to a shepherd’s crook,

      and when he died they stuck the crook

      in the ground and roses bloomed upon it,

      tresses of roses tumbled down,

      as he had claimed they would. He said

      there was no end to anything,

      not even death would be an end.

      His daughter, Sylvie, made a teacher

      of the schoolmarm type, and she

      taught Mister Key, back when the roads

      were traces and tracks along the streams.

      I’ve seen the way he made a 4,

      marked backwards on a barn beam.

      And he must have learned the philosophy

      that disarray is beautiful,

      and even a piece of wire is rare,

      though what a man could use it for

      is more uncommon still, and endless.

      So he unknowingly taught me,

      just as careless with my numbers

      and with melancholy of my own,

      who loves rose canes and bees

      and the sweet of mountain laurel trees,

      and all the unseen underneath.

      The people who had this place before

      it came to me were the Graves, but the man

      who built the barn was Mister Key —

      I’ve heard he was a troubled man —

      oh, he was clever with his hands,

      but sorely troubled otherwise,

      like a man who’s wandered out of a book.

SLEEP

      There is a room, and inside the room

      two old men are sitting side

      by side in a pair of stuffed chairs.

      I see the backs of the chairs, but a slip

      of light beneath them lets me see

      four

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