Andy

Andy, do you love me?

Do you think about it, will you say

Turning brushwood into blazes

Turning summer grass into hay

Turning sharply past the graveyard to the lakefront

With the black waves licking up the stones

To the swayed back screened in front porch

Who could ever stay the weight of flesh and bones

Andy, aren't you tired?

From the sun and rain and river soaking you

From the beer cans on your dashboard

And the bullet hole glass spiderweb staining your rearview

I have watched you watch an empty road

Is it only her upon which all of you's depending

To fill your twenty hour work day

While all the fences in this county still need mending

And in the night I do my checking

And fix the broken part with visions of rare beauty

But in my heart I know I'm second

Forever fixed in you pursuit it is my duty

Andy, will you toss me

A little scrap of something I can taste

Instead of dust from all the leaving

And the smell of summer lying here to waste

Under the burnt pyre of all the cast away

The tiny shoots will spring like questions will you take me

Out to the fenced field sprinkled with horses

Wild in resistance to the taming will you break me