it's easy to lose one's bearings.
Old Bushka enchanted the traffic signals,
and Copper Pipe Charlie ended up way the hell out to mile marker 47
going on about Jesus
while Fire Company 3 cut him out of the cab.
Sometimes people just won't shut their pie holes,
and a person can get thirsty for some solitude.
Old Bushka says
the old ways were the best ways,
but she never liked cabbage,
which marked her out among her own as something of an odd duck.
Copper Pipe Charlie never could explain
how he came to be axle-deep in mud out by Caroline Bird's mailbox,
but she came out and kindly held his hand in hers
as if she were Jesus' own receptionist,
while the clouds parted overhead and a silver jetliner circled above them.
CNN can chase their tails all they like--
Old Bushka is the only one who knows where everybody went,
and she's not talking
except to her big split-eared tom.
High on the roof of a Gypsy wagon, he once saw the moon
from closer up than you.
He saw what he saw.
Why do you think you have to ask so many questions,
when the night is warm
and there are more like Caroline Bird
just waiting to be found if you let go and wash up on her shore?
______