Long Coat Variations

I know that long coat.
I know that gray
striding through
the lost grass
of the golden brown
plains. I know
because I was there
watching through
the hole in the sky
just over the horizon
through which that long
coat man
was being shot,
framed by silence
like any old word
exactly placed,
and moving that way, too.

*

I remember turning
to my invisible sheriff
and sneering, “See you
in hell,” then pulling
the trigger and watching
him fall
back into the trough.
My teeth, like saloon doors
stopped mid-swing,
flashed as I smiled
at the splash and the blood
rivering through the white-
shirt valleys, out of
his chest and into the water.
I turned back, I suppose,
to the big black steed
my eight-year-old self
could never really mount.

*

It's been a long time.
It's a long time
coat. The buttons
on the coat
are entrances
to the cave
in which I am buried.
Let me show you.

*

In love, one
is Jesse James,
and the other,
Meramec Caverns.

*

The long coat
hanging like
a shadow from
the lowest limb
of the bare-
branched years.
Someone was
inside?

*

I will show you
the cave later.
I used to go there
often. A wild
cat would take me.
It's been a long
branching out
in the opposite
direction. I
don't remember
exactly what
it was that used
to rip me up
and take my bones
for firewood
that I might visit
with the sky—
an animal
or spirit man
from the forest
of dark long coats?