The Tract

The Tract

Nothing so expansive as to know 

the heavy head of fields on which I stamped

my name but cannot make the time

to mow. Nothing so vast as to yield 

each harvest a bumper crop 

of envelopes offering to shave a corner off

for cash, to seed into the under-

growth of all my goings questions

of inheritance. Neither so confined

where from the center point of porch 

I can trace the lines with the compass

of my eye, a plot so manageable 

as to slip into believing the world 

spins smooth as a globe and not 

the finger-spun acorn jumping 

across the ridges of a picnic table.

Space to lament how little gas 

in this mower, how many gaps

in this attempt at a fence, boundaries 

enough to know the roots of what's mine

and share the branches with the neighbor,

the sky. Tent, apartment, or ranch, 

it's a roughly three-acre life I'm after.