Ray

                                       – Rio Arriba County Adult Detention Center

When my student said he filed through his electronic ankle bracelet
I could hear the fetters drop in his throat.

The links were not seen, they were radio --
GPS -- traveling the band above the classic rock

breaking the FM below, traveling to some point in an office where,
late, someone was letting a baseball game float

past his cup of coffee, past his wallet laid next to a Hustler.
And suddenly, leaping into his car, my student had escaped what was

as invisible as what held him. When he said
he was pulling pines from the hills to make money,

watching them grind out of sight on the back
of a flatbed to the rich homes in the city,

I could hear the machinery of his story, the great arm
he once described as lifting, roots and all,

a Ponderosa as tall as summer, as wide around
as his hispanic family. The marvelous steel fork held, whined,

dearly, as only he could name it. When he said
he got caught on a thin ribbon of highway near

the potato fields where his grandfather worked,
it was for speeding with one light out, as if,

in any frail summer, you could do one or the other
but not both. You could sail right through life

with a little restraint. You could drive the stars
in their chill, the radio sipping the signals, eventually down

to the flesh. What catches you then is that you
are alone and free, but not both.