And so, shipwrecked—though I hadn’t left the house—I began
to list the things I knew. There was, for example, the airstrip.
And the oil slick. The strip mall. The foundry. The drain line.
Also: The woodpile. The rusted gate. The waste river.
And I paused, feeling good about the fullness of my experience,
what I knew of being alive, the comfort of my salvaged chair.
Then the world came flooding back: Blessed be the waterpark.
The swap meet. Its parking lot. This Kool-Aid pouch.
The faithlessness of men. The valley, verdant and free.
