The Closer You Get

to Leaving-the country

song I fashion, then unravel-

pines for a voice as nettled

as Loretta's, for fingers destined

to travel the guitar's fragile

neck, fretting his cheatin' steps from honky tonk

to home. "Ever since you left me"

takes lonesome for granted and downs

another of whatever handsome's

pouring. O to languish in such rich

aftermath, such bathrobe-

till-happy-hour-hair-of-the-dog

extravagance. Instead, the closer

you get to leaving the quicker

I weave a web of whisper-

thin beginnings: listless riverbank

kiss, a drifting glimpse, now weeks

upstream from the closer you get

to love. The closer you hold me

the sooner leaving moves its gerund

feet, sleepwalking, shedding

like bedclothes the careless

pretense of a noun.

When I try to lay down

the requisite rails, the very lines

I cannot follow, my town

deletes itself from your horizon.

Leaving picks up steam, its engine

coughing fewer lost

goodbyes the smaller

I get from

gone.