Her Family Hikes to a Lake

This town never is

(we discuss on the trail)

it was.  Fresh from the New city

her eldest brother wants “s**t food.”

He wants to sin with each burger bite, but

the burger never is.

His teeth plunge impotently into

like so last decade.

“Why do Native Americans believe

that sage smoke is purifying?”

her husband asks her youngest brother

(on the shore)

waving purification in aspirational movements.

We look away He looks away

to the moon from the moon,

over the lake.  A former astro- still too New.

naut, white-haired, five-second dissolves to a New scene

when, brown-haired, he aspired

to the moon.

Over the lake at night the moon eclipses.

Over the desert it is chalky.

Over the jungle it nearly drips.

Still it remains unreachable, except

to the astronaut who tells us

over the course of the documentary

that it was white and that he bounced

as well as various technical details

of the malfunctioning trajectory computer.

Speaking of falling helplessly over the moon,

her youngest brother comments

(on our way back to town)

that looking up at an eagle is

like a spiritual experience.  Over his talking head

we hear the flute track.

Author's Note

Major edit (yet again) on August 5.