Goodnight—Mary, Jane, Pat.Sleep tight, you sweet operatorsof America, your voices strunglike laundry across this nationdrowsy with a full century's worthof light. There's nothing youcan't tell me that I haven't alreadyheard gift-wrapped in your GeneralAmerican grace, but still I wonderin what chamber of a horse's ant-eaten skull I'll recover my youth.Our human garden grows richin these green suburbs and what I feelis not so much loss as a lessening,as if the self was nothing morethan a late-model sedan crossingthe city limit in search of a betterresale value. It's funny, this franchiseof molecules that fizzes up in eachof us, like motels viral along the interstate:some full while others flicker and die.When will the stars rain downlike cheap plaster? When will languagebe little more than a dandruff shakenfrom our heads? Ladies, you tell methe number I've been calling has beendisconnected, but where did the personit belonged to go? Alone on the lineI find only a prairie alive with funneledwind, a nation heavy with wheat and light,its chorus of dim voices locked in a kindof pharmaceutical sleep. I find a systemunchanged, charged with electrical pulsesthat send the receiver scurrying in its cradle,the longhand breath of ghosts risingthrough switchboards to ask Who's there?Well, tell me. Who is there? Who goes?Ladies, please wake up. I want to try again.