The water tank sags between

posts dug in the Carolina clay.

Its red metal shell upbraids function:

trash gathers in the fault

its red ends hinge

like a red kiss to winds

that last night squalled

limbs, cones, straw

from the southern pines.

I sink weight-pooling

prints in the ice grass

through clod under the broken

tank my tar-heel friends call Buffalo.

And "Buffalo" marked in white

spray paint and a Palmer's hand

reads the tank,

meaning what?

Meaning useless now?

That the earth's drift-up-and-pull

and famous weather deceived

in ways men try to reconcile.

Or meaning just used up

as the tank's outside

will be when lovers write

Jenny + Rick and

Forever Marianne and

Jo Loves Jon in '84 --

the qualifications

grim and peculiar

among all that buffalo.