I wake up at 8 or 9 in the morning

and float about my bed belly up,

like an ice flow broken loose

from some larger part of itself.

After that, I spend two or three hours

removing the territorial  markers

stuck in my body the day before

by the two brunettes. Around

two or three in the afternoon, there are

several high-speed drive-bys, followed by

frantic phone calls from the two brunettes,

demanding to know who moved the markers.

I am accused of double-dealing, of giving

the property away twice, of ignorance of the law.

After about an hour of this,

I become an Indian. I tell them

The Land cannot be owned,

that The Land owns itself.

This is always followed

by a moment of strategic silence,

after which they inform me I am correct,

that the Great White Father agrees

The Land cannot be owned,

that The Land owns itself,

that they only want to travel through me

to the waters of Redondo Beach, but I know

they are speaking with forked tongues:

I can already hear the hissing of railroads

                   (Con’t.)

and the huge herds of cattle

stomping up and down on me,

fattening themselves for market.

Sometimes at night

I dream of my mother.

She has been dead now for 3 or 4 years.

She is always waiting for me on the front porch

of one of the thousands of identical homes

in Levittown New York. When she sees me,

she tells me she is sorry to hear about

the property lines, but they are unavoidable.

When I look around at the hundreds and

hundreds of rows of white clapboard homes,

I am reminded of those vast graveyards

for American soldiers you see in France.

There are paper flowers everywhere.