The valley groves are gone and Coop still lives here.
There are purple and blue wildflowers in a field

behind the bankrupt strip mall down the road a piece.
There are eucalyptus, thick with leaves, that surround

a broken-down stable, thick with noble ghosts of horses.
Mostly Coop looks from his porch, or a window, as

animals come out of hiding, after chainsaws, short-order
cooks, and the sun have set down: opossum, stray dog,

a bobcat drifted far from its foothill. Coop has heard
neighborhood houses clearing— moving van, drunken

quarrel, gunshot, cursing and sobbing. Once he spotted a
mountain lion and a bear cub on a moonlit stroll down

his street, unlikely allies in a world of hunger. What was
Coop hungry for? his wife once asked him. He in turn

asked the toolshed, the kitchen floor, the counters at the
hardware store, but never received reply. Maybe he’ll go

hiking. Lock the old place up and throw away the bills.
Maybe home looks like a fox and a deer… maybe

a wood and a highway. Maybe Robert Frost’s grave.
                        

I eat a small bowl of noodles, delicately,
	try to be as observant as I am reverent,
		like Joanne Kyger, along with every other person
	listening to string quartets in their heads. Along with everyone else
who sees art as a kind of decency.