Now I have been asleep a long time.
I am grown opal, unbreakable: a white blade

We let it keep itself
since it refuses to belong to us. We are

No closer now to knowing it, that rock world,
years past the storybook age. Desolation’s lode,

My friends, before we wheel
out the most staggering invention of all time

These are the same stairs, unnoticed, essential,
submerged in shadow bath; and that is the same

I’ve been to see the friend who died.
He’s fine. Less ugly (oh, he was ugly,
our poor friend!), and that waxy pallor

But there is only one of you
they say as though they knew
and it may even be true

Your staggered lenses, trained on an empty track,
recorded what straggled into view
and out again, a dust cloud and a leaning pack

As he starts with her tippet, takes off
her bonnet, moves on to fingering
stay and skin, my brain cells stray

 Riding to the Great Northern Wilderness
we sang about self-correction in the club car,
dreamed up new crimes to put in our autobiographies