Tim Carrier

Dark Blue in a Country, 1998
 
i.

We were riding the back of a cart on a sandpath in the sage & brush around us. The mules lifted the dirt around the wheels.

In the evening, Jupiter was the first planet of twilight. Only planet.

The secret is to feel.

Just because it didn’t happen doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

But it happened. The desert-cart was true.
 
 
 
ii.
 
Just because it didn’t happen,…. I mean,

something not being likely doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

What something was isn’t how it is, necessarily. Now or here.

The white brick cart the desert house

Lucky to have what I’ve got or lucky not to get it.

The secret is to feel. The bad news is everything’s fine.
 
 
 
iii.

It felt like fire but only round
the first layer of my eyes

The water layer the I was there
the dirt, the dark, the sky of

You, Jupiter. & Orion constellation. I had it.

I was close to you. I feel. A darkblue. A true.

Changer, —of dirt— Do you notice how much I’ve healed.
 
 
 
iv.

Something not being likely doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

It’s true there is an energy from the white brick apartment house. Now on the corner, here.

There was a cart, with people of legs dangling over,

looking backwards & around us in

the dirt & scrub & brush.

Like little bones of the ear around the flame, changing.

The past has never left us. I heard it come back, alive.

The secret is to feel it felt like fire its first layer

the cart, the light, the dark, the dirt, the luck, the brick, the wheels,
the brush, the scrub, the sand the sky

      of you, Jupiter. Orion.

      I was close. Changer,    of feel.
 
 
 
Tim Carrier is from St. Louis and lives in New York City. He earned an MFA at the Institute of American Indian Arts (as a white / non-Native student), was a 2014 Lambda Literary Fellow, and was the Galway Kinnell Memorial Scholar at the Community of Writers in 2015. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Hinchas de Poesía, Connotation Press, The Fourth River, The Offing, and other journals.