ALT ASK FOR NOTHING Instead walk alone in the evening heading out of town toward the fields asleep under a darkening sky; the dust risen from your steps transforms itself into a golden rain fallen earthward as a gift from no known god. The plane trees along the canal bank, the few valley poplars, hold their breath as you cross the wooden bridge that leads nowhere you haven’t been, for this walk repeats itself once or more a day. That is why in the distance you see beyond the first ridge of low hills where nothing ever grows, men and women astride mules, on horseback, some even on foot, all the lost family you never prayed to see, praying to see you, chanting and singing to bring the moon down into the last of the sunlight. Behind you the windows of the town blink on and off, the houses close down; ahead the voices fade like music over deep water, and then are gone; even the sudden, tumbling finches have fled into smoke, and the one road whitened in moonlight leads everywhere.