The Church of the Open Crayon Box

Must be entered through the sharpener every Sunday,

else your name will be lovingly written in the Book

of the Down Arrow. The One Steeple to Every Church

                                                 rule breaks in half

in the Church of the Open Crayon Box; the One Bell

to Every Steeple rule breaks off its tip. “Climb stairs

to the steeples,” the preacher commands, “and let

every belltone ring out!” You can see the whole town

from the steeple, and you exit the church through

the view, and you walk through what calls itself

                                      Flagpole—the town is a blot

                                      on the town, but the railroad

is coming out this way and we must give them a smear

to see through the windows: now you pass the General Store,

that even your vaguest stick figure can enter, now you pass

a vacant lot: the post office isn’t here yet, is only a set-aside space

in the center of the country’s envelope; now you pass the voting-

place, where we stuff our handwriting through a slit. Tall trees

fall in the pinewoods, tall telegraph poles are raised, and words

inch along our wires: text text text stop, text text text stop.

And now you pass the Feed Store, which sells carrot and turnip

and sugar-beet tops—only the visible parts—and now Whitey

BaLavender’s Hardware, where everything hangs off the hook

of its color, or color hangs off the hook of its all, where you work

your hands into cool washers, and work hands into nailheads

of the color blue, and watch Whitey BaLavender busy himself

          pouring crayons into bullet molds. You show him a list

          that says “ax,” and he sells you a red line through it.

                     All up and down Main Street ponies are covered

                     with strokes as coarse as horse blankets. And once

          you have drawn the ponies you begin to draw the saddle

shop, you grip the right color like a saddle horn and somehow

keep from falling off, and you ride to the edge of town,

where you draw the fur trading post, where they sell tails

of any shy animal, the rest of the animal gone down a hole,

where you trade in your skin for a possibles bag and wear

possibles bag where your skin was. Fat geese fly in any letter

you like but you need red meat for once, and write a splayed-

hide word like “Deerslayer,” and take hold of the ending

                                                         and drag it home,

and now you are almost there, now you are building the home

with hand-drawn Log Cabin Font, you are building it log

by log of course and smoothing the logs with a color called

Adze, you are biting the crayon to notch the logs and driving

in dots of nailheads. Stumps of umber surround you, and the sky

is beginning to look like sky. You are hoping a man can be really

          alone here;

                            you are hoping your father can tell what it is;

and now only the doorknob is left to draw and in your enthusiasm

you shout at the paper, and the weather

                            changes just in time, not raining, beginning to spit.