I drive into the plains when the moon is full. I find a dirt road.
There is a pasture gate with a turn-off where I stop. Horses graze in
the distance. I know cattle are there. The moon casts a blue light.
I see deer watching from the rise.

The Spirit is not what I expect. A bird with wings made of thorns
that curve as if rings in the trunk of a cut tree.

Once my father drove in the field on my grand-father’s farm— turning
and turning the car in circles— the back door of the old Dodge flying
open— my brother falling out. We circled back. It knocked the air
out of him. He lay on the ground trying to suck air into his lungs.

Now the wings are a pitchfork in the shifting pattern of the Spirit.
Here on earth we are spilled from the father’s car in these swings of
his erratic driving