You can go anywhere you like
But you can’t outrun your head
Aunt History walks through a grim place
Some New Jersey marsh reclamation
Where even dinosaur bones
Can’t be found—
Just mob land corpses
And the teeth
Of railroad workers
She loves to walk
American highways
Though they have
Narrow shoulders
Death is not unlikely
But the truck
That hits her
Will roll straight through
And she’ll keep going
Like Mozart’s Papageno
Oddly cheerful
But also broken hearted
Her job is to pick things up
Carry them in her robe
Lost keys
Crumpled pages
A wind blown lock of hair
The hair of a child
A discarded flute
A single dancing shoe
Planet of the Blind 