True West

Some patron of epic commotion
must have proposed it: roaring blood, picture-perfect
in action. Even idle, it threatens to break
at any second across the fuming plain and
into Scene: Hero finds himself solo, waning.
His foes are ringed all around and he, still, propped
against the crooked oak that all his warmth went into.

Maybe a real horse comes along
to watch the last blood blow thinly away.
The pink and fragrant hills, merely breathing
the air makes you wait for the plain
to tell and tell again its story,
for the sum of a vanished world
to issue like theory from the fog,

but nothing comes. Absolutely nothing
comes, except an image of the classic
mare you loved as a child,
ramshackle and bumping along,
the burrs in its coat a truth told twice
as if your whole body were built on this premise.