Billy Blood and the Hijackers of Time

At the campfire, he played guitar and sang
until the last beer was drowned.

Against night’s blinds, cigarettes were fireflies
dancing languid cymbal-brush waves.

Wind-scattered cormorants slept as far as Hope Bay;
an owl cut the Milky Way in half.

‘Once upon a time,’ he thought—‘once upon a time in the spider’s
web of politics and guns; high tide, rogue moon—

once upon a time on dusty streets, in raucous café’s
where 60’s hobos waited for the last milk wagon

out of time, searched for Eden in wood-lots,
spaceships and permafrost—once upon a time.’

He walked the path to his car, placed the guitar in the trunk
and wrapped himself in the night’s sentences.

Paragraphs pooled against parking-lot lights. ‘The world is
an airport, each plane departing events.

I need a chair on which to sit, a book to read,
but every book is copyrighted by me.

Planes leave erratically,
ignore every schedule.’