From Loki Is Buried at Smoky Creek: Selected Poems, published by Talonbooks in 1980 .

I thought where I came from we grow up

also only to reach heaven

and / or what our bodies dictate to us

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Sometimes I remember the ‘hinge’ too late

or what we call the ‘fence’

having crossed over it side to side.

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Such ‘things’ and their ideas are ‘walls’

and demand me return into my life

as the dogs scratch at the door for the

   warmth there.

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I wonder if I can ever pay attention like that

to my own life and the simple or bare

   particulars

of what is its ‘number’ without making up 

some other cruel paradigm to swim around in.

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I feel the spring in me and the water running.

But I don’t know how it does that or where.

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