I could live in the descending chords of a seventies serenade,
the spacious tawny bars breaking the light into golden bricks.

I would have been at the guitar all day while
you went to your class and gathered flowers in a
clutch of muslin on your way home.

The kids smell like the pyracantha again, their blond hair
dirty with the resin of the waxy red berry.

Evening leads to thick ceramic bowls of something.
Warm and off-white and swimming with split herbs.

Later there’s the waterbed, bounded
by red-stained pine planks, or something else that
grows in the cindered air of the high blue desert.

The same wood our table is made of, the one you
brought home from the roadside Indian stand.

I think our children can live here.

I found the cow’s head in the side-yard
behind the juniper,
but not before it grew a place in our son’s mind.

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Ian Carr works as a legal analyst in Portland, Oregon. Originally from Phoenix, Arizona, he earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Northern Arizona University and his Juris Doctor degree from Lewis & Clark Law School.

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Read more of Ian Carr’s featured poetry in Portland Review‘s Winter 2016 issue.